Quieter Than the Room: Representation Drift and Task Robustness in Speech Encoders
Non-speech interference can change a speech representation without causing comparable task loss. We test eight frozen encoders on four tasks, adding non-speech sounds throughout recordings, during speech, or in pauses. Under whole-recording interference, embedding drift tracks task loss across seven sounds, with mean Spearman correlations of 0.81-0.88. Moving the same sound between speech and pauses changes this pattern. At quiet to moderate levels, pause interference produces larger drift, while speech interference usually causes greater loss on intent recognition, speaker verification and speech recognition. Emotion recognition shows a weaker placement effect. Pause interference also ch...
| Authors | Vsevolod Kovalev, Pranay Manocha |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.SD |
| Published | 23 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 23 September 2026 |
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