A Two-Step Learning Framework for Enhancing Sound Event Localization and Detection

Sound Event Localization and Detection (SELD) is crucial in spatial audio processing, enabling systems to detect sound events and estimate their 3D directions. Existing SELD methods use single- or dual-branch architectures: single-branch models share SED and DoA representations, causing optimization conflicts, while dual-branch models separate tasks but limit information exchange. To address this, we propose a two-step learning framework. First, we introduce a tracwise reordering format to maintain temporal consistency, preventing event reassignments across tracks. Next, we train SED and DoA networks to prevent interference and ensure task-specific feature learning. Finally, we effectively fuse DoA and SED features to enhance SELD performance with better spatial and event representation. Experiments on the 2023 DCASE challenge Task 3 dataset validate our framework, showing its ability to overcome single- and dual-branch limitations and improve event classification and localization.