System and Method for Hierarchical Audio Source Separation

An audio processing method, wherein the method uses a processor coupled to a memory storing a neural network trained to process an audio mixture to output estimation of at least a subset of a set of audio sources present in the audio mixture, wherein the audio sources are subject to hierarchical constraints enforcing a parent-children hierarchy on the set of audio sources, such that a parent audio source in the parent-children hierarchy includes a mixture of its one or multiple children audio sources, and wherein the subset includes at least one parent audio source and at least one of its children audio source, wherein the processor is coupled with stored instructions implementing the method, wherein the instructions, when executed by the processor carry out steps of the method, comprising:

• receiving an input audio mixture;
• processing the input audio mixture using the neural network to extract estimates of the subset of audio sources and their mutual relationships according to the parent-children hierarchy;
• and
• rendering the extracted audio sources and their mutual relationships.