Apparatus and method for processing an information signal using a multi-stage processing

An apparatus for processing an information signal comprises: a feature extractor (100) for extracting a set of features from the information signal, wherein each feature of the set of features comprises at least two feature components, and wherein the set of features comprises a first subset with the first feature components and a second subset with the second feature components; and a neural network processor (300) comprising: a first neural network (340) for receiving, as an input, the first subset and for outputting a processed first subset; a combiner (350) for combining the processed first subset and the second subset to obtain a combined subset; and a second neural network (360) for receiving, as an input, the combined subset and for outputting a processed combined output, wherein the processed combined output represents a processed information signal, or wherein the apparatus is configured to calculate the processed information signal using the processed combined output, and wherein a complexity of the first neural network (340) is greater than a complexity of the second neural network.