Sample-Constrained Black Box Optimization for Audio Personalization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Rajagopalan, Rajalaxmi, Wei, Yu-Lin, Choudhury, Romit Roy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Rajagopalan, Rajalaxmi
Wei, Yu-Lin
Choudhury, Romit Roy
author_facet Rajagopalan, Rajalaxmi
Wei, Yu-Lin
Choudhury, Romit Roy
contents We consider the problem of personalizing audio to maximize user experience. Briefly, we aim to find a filter $h^*$, which applied to any music or speech, will maximize the user's satisfaction. This is a black-box optimization problem since the user's satisfaction function is unknown. Substantive work has been done on this topic where the key idea is to play audio samples to the user, each shaped by a different filter $h_i$, and query the user for their satisfaction scores $f(h_i)$. A family of ``surrogate" functions is then designed to fit these scores and the optimization method gradually refines these functions to arrive at the filter $\hat{h}^*$ that maximizes satisfaction. In certain applications, we observe that a second type of querying is possible where users can tell us the individual elements $h^*[j]$ of the optimal filter $h^*$. Consider an analogy from cooking where the goal is to cook a recipe that maximizes user satisfaction. A user can be asked to score various cooked recipes (e.g., tofu fried rice) or to score individual ingredients (say, salt, sugar, rice, chicken, etc.). Given a budget of $B$ queries, where a query can be of either type, our goal is to find the recipe that will maximize this user's satisfaction. Our proposal builds on Sparse Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) and shows how a hybrid approach can outperform any one type of querying. Our results are validated through simulations and real world experiments, where volunteers gave feedback on music/speech audio and were able to achieve high satisfaction levels. We believe this idea of hybrid querying opens new problems in black-box optimization and solutions can benefit other applications beyond audio personalization.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_12773
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Sample-Constrained Black Box Optimization for Audio Personalization
Rajagopalan, Rajalaxmi
Wei, Yu-Lin
Choudhury, Romit Roy
Sound
Machine Learning
Audio and Speech Processing
We consider the problem of personalizing audio to maximize user experience. Briefly, we aim to find a filter $h^*$, which applied to any music or speech, will maximize the user's satisfaction. This is a black-box optimization problem since the user's satisfaction function is unknown. Substantive work has been done on this topic where the key idea is to play audio samples to the user, each shaped by a different filter $h_i$, and query the user for their satisfaction scores $f(h_i)$. A family of ``surrogate" functions is then designed to fit these scores and the optimization method gradually refines these functions to arrive at the filter $\hat{h}^*$ that maximizes satisfaction. In certain applications, we observe that a second type of querying is possible where users can tell us the individual elements $h^*[j]$ of the optimal filter $h^*$. Consider an analogy from cooking where the goal is to cook a recipe that maximizes user satisfaction. A user can be asked to score various cooked recipes (e.g., tofu fried rice) or to score individual ingredients (say, salt, sugar, rice, chicken, etc.). Given a budget of $B$ queries, where a query can be of either type, our goal is to find the recipe that will maximize this user's satisfaction. Our proposal builds on Sparse Gaussian Process Regression (GPR) and shows how a hybrid approach can outperform any one type of querying. Our results are validated through simulations and real world experiments, where volunteers gave feedback on music/speech audio and were able to achieve high satisfaction levels. We believe this idea of hybrid querying opens new problems in black-box optimization and solutions can benefit other applications beyond audio personalization.
title Sample-Constrained Black Box Optimization for Audio Personalization
topic Sound
Machine Learning
Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12773