eess.ASJul 6, 2026

Ranking the Impact of Contextual Specialization in Neural Speech Enhancement

Authors: Peter LeerSvend FeldtZheng-Hua TanJan ØstergaardJesper Jensen

Organizations: Eriksholm Research Centre, Snekkersten, Denmark · Aalborg University, Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg, Denmark

Abstract

We systematically investigate neural speech enhancement systems, ranging from very small (\sim10,k parameters) to medium-large (\sim2-5,M parameters), which specialize to acoustic conditions using contextual information such as speaker identity, noise type, speaker gender, spoken language, and SNR. By fine-tuning generalist models on specific data subsets, we find that specializing to a speaker's identity consistently yields the largest gains in estimated speech intelligibility and quality. In contrast, specializing to SNR, noise type, or gender offers only marginal benefits. Crucially, we show that a small model specialized to both a specific speaker and a specific noise type can match or exceed the performance of a generalist model ten times its size. Further, cross-lingual tests reveal that models specialized to a target language outperform multilingual generalists, suggesting that language is a salient feature for specialization. These findings highlight the potential of small, adaptive models for resource-constrained applications like hearing aids, which specialize on-the-fly to contextual information.

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