AuTAgent: A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Tool-Augmented Audio Reasoning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13685v1
• Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2026 09:12:20 GMT
• Title: AuTAgent: A Reinforcement Learning Framework for Tool-Augmented Audio Reasoning
• Authors: Siqian Tong, Xuan Li, Yiwei Wang, Baolong Bi, Yujun Cai, Shenghua Liu, Yuchen He, Chengpeng Hao,
• Abstract summary: Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) excel at perception but struggle with complex reasoning requiring precise acoustic measurements.<n>We propose AuTAgent, a reinforcement learning framework that learns when and which tools to invoke.
• Score: 36.67330306977483
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Large Audio Language Models (LALMs) excel at perception but struggle with complex reasoning requiring precise acoustic measurements. While external tools can extract fine-grained features like exact tempo or pitch, effective integration remains challenging: naively using all tools causes information overload, while prompt-based selection fails to assess context-dependent utility. To address this, we propose AuTAgent (Audio Tool Agent), a reinforcement learning framework that learns when and which tools to invoke. By employing a sparse-feedback training strategy with a novel Differential Reward mechanism, the agent learns to filter out irrelevant tools and invokes external assistance only when it yields a net performance gain over the base model. Experimental results confirm that AuTAgent complements the representation bottleneck of LALMs by providing verifiable acoustic evidence. It improves accuracy by 4.20% / 6.20% and 9.80% / 8.00% for open-source and closed-source backbones on the MMAU Test-mini and the MMAR benchmarks, respectively. In addition, further experiments demonstrate exceptional transferability. We highlight the complementary role of external tools in augmenting audio model reasoning.

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