Online incremental learning for audio classification using a pretrained audio model

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Mulimani, Manjunath, Mesaros, Annamaria
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Mulimani, Manjunath
Mesaros, Annamaria
author_facet Mulimani, Manjunath
Mesaros, Annamaria
contents Incremental learning aims to learn new tasks sequentially without forgetting the previously learned ones. Most of the existing incremental learning methods for audio focus on training the model from scratch on the initial task, and the same model is used to learn upcoming incremental tasks. The model is trained for several iterations to adapt to each new task, using some specific approaches to reduce the forgetting of old tasks. In this work, we propose a method for using generalizable audio embeddings produced by a pre-trained model to develop an online incremental learner that solves sequential audio classification tasks over time. Specifically, we inject a layer with a nonlinear activation function between the pre-trained model's audio embeddings and the classifier; this layer expands the dimensionality of the embeddings and effectively captures the distinct characteristics of sound classes. Our method adapts the model in a single forward pass (online) through the training samples of any task, with minimal forgetting of old tasks. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method in two incremental learning setups: one class-incremental learning using ESC-50 and one domain-incremental learning of different cities from the TAU Urban Acoustic Scenes 2019 dataset; for both cases, the proposed approach outperforms other methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20732
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online incremental learning for audio classification using a pretrained audio model
Mulimani, Manjunath
Mesaros, Annamaria
Audio and Speech Processing
Incremental learning aims to learn new tasks sequentially without forgetting the previously learned ones. Most of the existing incremental learning methods for audio focus on training the model from scratch on the initial task, and the same model is used to learn upcoming incremental tasks. The model is trained for several iterations to adapt to each new task, using some specific approaches to reduce the forgetting of old tasks. In this work, we propose a method for using generalizable audio embeddings produced by a pre-trained model to develop an online incremental learner that solves sequential audio classification tasks over time. Specifically, we inject a layer with a nonlinear activation function between the pre-trained model's audio embeddings and the classifier; this layer expands the dimensionality of the embeddings and effectively captures the distinct characteristics of sound classes. Our method adapts the model in a single forward pass (online) through the training samples of any task, with minimal forgetting of old tasks. We demonstrate the performance of the proposed method in two incremental learning setups: one class-incremental learning using ESC-50 and one domain-incremental learning of different cities from the TAU Urban Acoustic Scenes 2019 dataset; for both cases, the proposed approach outperforms other methods.
title Online incremental learning for audio classification using a pretrained audio model
topic Audio and Speech Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20732