# SPUR: A Plug-and-Play Framework for Integrating Spatial Audio Understanding and Reasoning into Large Audio-Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06606 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06606/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Audio-language model reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 22 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Audio-language model reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/audio-language-model-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Robust Speech Recognition via Large-Scale Weak Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04356/) (2022)
- [Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06261/) (2025)
- [Qwen2.5-Omni Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20215/) (2025)
- [Qwen2-Audio Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.10759/) (2024)
- [Phi-4-Mini Technical Report: Compact yet Powerful Multimodal Language Models via Mixture-of-LoRAs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01743/) (2025)
- [Qwen3-Omni Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17765/) (2025)
- [Kimi-Audio Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.18425/) (2025)
- [Audio Flamingo 3: Advancing Audio Intelligence with Fully Open Large Audio Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.08128/) (2025)
- [Step-Audio 2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16632/) (2025)
- [STARSS23: An Audio-Visual Dataset of Spatial Recordings of Real Scenes with Spatiotemporal Annotations of Sound Events](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09126/) (2023)
- [BAT: Learning to Reason about Spatial Sounds with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01591/) (2024)
- [Learning Spatially-Aware Language and Audio Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11369/) (2024)
- [Can Large Language Models Understand Spatial Audio?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07914/) (2024)
- [FN-SSL: Full-Band and Narrow-Band Fusion for Sound Source Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19610/) (2023)
- [OWL: Geometry-Aware Spatial Reasoning for Audio Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26140/) (2025)
- [SALM: Spatial Audio Language Model with Structured Embeddings for Understanding and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16724/) (2025)
- [DSpAST: Disentangled Representations for Spatial Audio Reasoning with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.13927/) (2025)
- [Spatial Audio Processing with Large Language Model on Wearable Devices](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08907/) (2025)
- [Towards Spatial Audio Understanding via Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09195/) (2025)
- [Blind Estimation of Sub-band Acoustic Parameters from Ambisonics Recordings using Spectro-Spatial Covariance Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03172/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Spatial-Omni: Spatial Audio Understanding Integration in Multimodal LLMs via FOA Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10738/) (2026)
- [Spatial Audio Question Answering and Reasoning on Dynamic Source Movements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16334/) (2026)
- [Spatio-Temporal Audio Language Modeling for Dynamic Sound Sources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14141/) (2026)
- [OmniEcho: Audio-Visual Spatial Understanding for Omni-Modal Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.23407/) (2026)
- [Listen, See and Track: Spatio-Temporal Audio-Visual Sound Event Reasoning for Omni-Modal Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09435/) (2026)
- [SAIL: Spatial Audio Intelligence with Large Language Models via Disentangled Acoustic-Spatial Encoding and Dual-Stream Q-Former](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.34347/) (2026)
- [SEA-LM: Egocentric Spatial Audio Understanding for Wearable Microphone Arrays](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05610/) (2026)
- [ADAPT: Audio-Depth Action Planning with Transition-Aware Rewards for Lights-Out Industrial Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.15956/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Spatial perception is central to auditory intelligence, enabling accurate understanding of real-world acoustic scenes and advancing human-level perception of the world around us. While recent large audio-language models (LALMs) show strong reasoning over complex audios, most operate on monaural inputs and lack the ability to capture spatial cues such as direction, elevation, and distance. We introduce SPUR, a lightweight, plug-in approach that equips LALMs with spatial perception through minimal architectural changes. SPUR consists of: (i) a First-Order Ambisonics (FOA) encoder that maps (W, X, Y, Z) channels to rotation-aware, listener-centric spatial features, integrated into target LALMs via a multimodal adapter; and (ii) SPUR-Set, a spatial QA dataset combining open-source FOA recordings with controlled simulations, emphasizing relative direction, elevation, distance, and overlap for supervised spatial reasoning. Fine-tuning our model on the SPUR-Set consistently improves spatial QA and multi-speaker attribution while preserving general audio understanding. SPUR provides a simple recipe that transforms monaural LALMs into spatially aware models. Extensive ablations validate the effectiveness of our approach.