Abstract: In view of the shortcomings of loudspeaker Rub & Buzz detection based on time-frequency analysis, such as short-time Fourier transform and wavelet packet transform, a method of loudspeaker Rub & Buzz detection based on variational mode decomposition and Hilbert (VMD-Hilbert) transform is proposed. Firstly, the time-frequency characteristics of the VMD-Hilbert transform are studied by simulation signal analysis, and compared with the other three time-frequency analysis methods. The results show that the VMD-Hilbert transform has better adaptability, energy focus and time-frequency resolution. Then, the sound response signals of measured loudspeakers are processed with VMD-Hilbert transform to obtain the feature distances between the measured loudspeakers. The comparative analysis of feature distances obtained by different time-frequency analysis methods is made. The experimental results show that the dispersion of the feature distances between classes under VMD-Hilbert transform is larger, which is beneficial for setting the appropriate threshold. It is verified that the VMD-Hilbert transform can better represent the time-frequency characteristics of Rub & Buzz, and its superiority in dealing with nonlinear and nonstationary loudspeaker sound responses is also verified.