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Computer Science > Sound

arXiv:2505.05654 (cs)
[Submitted on 8 May 2025]

Title:Toward a Sparse and Interpretable Audio Codec

Authors:John Vinyard
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Audio Codec, by John Vinyard
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    Abstract:Most widely-used modern audio codecs, such as Ogg Vorbis
    and MP3, as well as more recent "neural" codecs like Meta's
    Encodec or the Descript Audio Codec are based on block-coding;
    audio is divided into overlapping, fixed-size "frames" which are
    then compressed. While they often yield excellent reproductions
    and can be used for downstream tasks such as text-to-audio, they
    do not produce an intuitive, directly-interpretable
    representation. In this work, we introduce a proof-of-concept
    audio encoder that represents audio as a sparse set of events and
    their times-of-occurrence. Rudimentary physics-based assumptions
    are used to model attack and the physical resonance of both the
    instrument being played and the room in which a performance
    occurs, hopefully encouraging a sparse, parsimonious, and
    easy-to-interpret representation.

Subjects: Sound (cs.SD); Audio and Speech Processing (eess.AS)
Cite as:  arXiv:2505.05654 [cs.SD]
          (or arXiv:2505.05654v1 [cs.SD] for this version)
          https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.05654
          Focus to learn more
          arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history

From: John Vinyard [view email]
[v1] Thu, 8 May 2025 21:20:05 UTC (2,845 KB)
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