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RESEARCH PAPER / 2026-02-01

TLDiffGAN: A Latent Diffusion-GAN Framework with Temporal Information Fusion for Anomalous Sound Detection

Chengyuan Ma, Peng Jia, Hongyue Guo ...Full author list in the original paper.

Tsinghua University +2 · ICASSP 2026

Affiliations: Tsinghua University, Dalian Maritime University, Shenzhen International Graduate School

Abstract

Existing generative models for unsupervised anomalous sound detection are limited by their inability to fully capture the complex feature distribution of normal sounds, while the potential of powerful diffusion models in this domain remains largely unexplored. To address this challenge, we propose a novel framework, TLDiffGAN, which consists of two complementary branches. One branch incorporates a latent diffusion model into the GAN generator for adversarial training, thereby making the discriminator's task more challenging and improving the quality of generated samples. The other branch leverages pretrained audio model encoders to extract features directly from raw audio waveforms for auxiliary discrimination. This framework effectively captures feature representations of normal sounds from both raw audio and Mel spectrograms. Moreover, we introduce a TMixup spectrogram augmentation technique to enhance sensitivity to subtle and localized temporal patterns that are often overlooked. Extensive experiments on the DCASE 2020 Challenge Task 2 dataset demonstrate the superior detection performance of TLDiffGAN, as well as its strong capability in anomalous time-frequency localization.

The following analysis is generated by AI and may contain errors. It is separate from the authors’ abstract and is not peer review.

Research summary

The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of TLDiffGAN, a novel framework that integrates latent diffusion models with GANs for improved anomalous sound detection. This work significantly advances the state of the art in the field by addressing key limitations of existing generative models and demonstrating superior performance through rigorous experimental validation.

Methodology

The proposed TLDiffGAN framework innovatively combines latent diffusion models with GANs to enhance the quality of generated spectrograms for anomalous sound detection. The dual-branch architecture effectively integrates features from both raw audio and Mel spectrograms, addressing the limitations of traditional single-modality approaches. The introduction of the TMixup technique to augment temporal features is a significant methodological advancement, enhancing the model's sensitivity to subtle anomalies. However, the complexity of the model may pose challenges in terms of interpretability and practical deployment.

Results & evaluation

The experiments conducted on the DCASE 2020 Challenge Task 2 dataset are extensive and demonstrate a clear improvement over existing methods in terms of AUC and pAUC metrics. The comparative analysis with other state-of-the-art methods provides strong evidence for the effectiveness of TLDiffGAN. The ablation studies further validate the contributions of each component, reinforcing the robustness of the proposed framework.

Reproducibility

The paper provides detailed implementation details, including network configurations, training protocols, and evaluation metrics, which support reproducibility. However, the absence of a publicly available code repository or demo limits the ease with which others can replicate the results.

Limitations

One limitation is the reliance on a specific dataset (DCASE 2020) for evaluation, which may not fully capture the generalizability of the model across different domains or types of anomalous sounds. Additionally, the model's complexity could lead to challenges in real-time applications, particularly in resource-constrained environments.

Broader impact

The framework has significant implications for industrial applications, particularly in predictive maintenance and monitoring of machinery, where timely detection of anomalies can prevent failures and reduce downtime. The ability to localize anomalies in the time-frequency domain enhances interpretability, which is crucial for practitioners in the field. The main contribution of this paper is the introduction of TLDiffGAN, a novel framework that integrates latent diffusion models with GANs for improved anomalous sound detection. This work significantly advances the state of the art in the field by addressing key limitations of existing generative models and demonstrating superior performance through rigorous experimental validation.

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