SEE: Signal Embedding Energy for Quantifying Noise Interference in Large Audio Language Models

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zhang, Yuanhe, Tian, Jiayu, Zhang, Yibo, Yan, Shilinlu, Lin, Liang, Zhou, Zhenhong, Sun, Li, Su, Sen
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866915723063853056
author Zhang, Yuanhe
Tian, Jiayu
Zhang, Yibo
Yan, Shilinlu
Lin, Liang
Zhou, Zhenhong
Sun, Li
Su, Sen
author_facet Zhang, Yuanhe
Tian, Jiayu
Zhang, Yibo
Yan, Shilinlu
Lin, Liang
Zhou, Zhenhong
Sun, Li
Su, Sen
contents Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) have been widely applied in real-time scenarios, such as in-car assistants and online meeting comprehension. In practice, audio inputs are often corrupted by device and environmental noise, leading to performance degradation. However, existing LALM studies on noise lack quantitative analysis and rely mainly on intuition and empirical observation, thus failing to understand practical robustness. To address this issue, we introduce Signal Embedding Energy (SEE), a method for quantifying the impact of noise intensity on LALM inputs, enabling the differentiation of LALM robustness in real-world deployments. SEE introduces a perspective based on structured activation subspaces derived from the model's internal representations, which more accurately captures its perception of noise than raw audio features. Across experiments, SEE exhibits a strong correlation with LALM performance, achieving a correlation of 0.98. Surprisingly, traditional audio denoising methods are only marginally effective for LALMs, and, in some cases, even increase SEE and impair performance. This suggests a mismatch between speech-centric denoising objectives and the noise sensitivity of modern LALMs. Therefore, we propose a mitigation strategy derived from SEE to denoise LALM inputs, outperforming existing denoising methods. This paper introduces a novel metric for noise quantification in LALMs, providing guidance for robustness improvements in real-world deployments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_07331
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle SEE: Signal Embedding Energy for Quantifying Noise Interference in Large Audio Language Models
Zhang, Yuanhe
Tian, Jiayu
Zhang, Yibo
Yan, Shilinlu
Lin, Liang
Zhou, Zhenhong
Sun, Li
Su, Sen
Sound
Machine Learning
Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) have been widely applied in real-time scenarios, such as in-car assistants and online meeting comprehension. In practice, audio inputs are often corrupted by device and environmental noise, leading to performance degradation. However, existing LALM studies on noise lack quantitative analysis and rely mainly on intuition and empirical observation, thus failing to understand practical robustness. To address this issue, we introduce Signal Embedding Energy (SEE), a method for quantifying the impact of noise intensity on LALM inputs, enabling the differentiation of LALM robustness in real-world deployments. SEE introduces a perspective based on structured activation subspaces derived from the model's internal representations, which more accurately captures its perception of noise than raw audio features. Across experiments, SEE exhibits a strong correlation with LALM performance, achieving a correlation of 0.98. Surprisingly, traditional audio denoising methods are only marginally effective for LALMs, and, in some cases, even increase SEE and impair performance. This suggests a mismatch between speech-centric denoising objectives and the noise sensitivity of modern LALMs. Therefore, we propose a mitigation strategy derived from SEE to denoise LALM inputs, outperforming existing denoising methods. This paper introduces a novel metric for noise quantification in LALMs, providing guidance for robustness improvements in real-world deployments.
title SEE: Signal Embedding Energy for Quantifying Noise Interference in Large Audio Language Models
topic Sound
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07331