diff --git a/.jules/bolt.md b/.jules/bolt.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..17c916a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.jules/bolt.md
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+## 2024-05-23 - Sparse Mel Filterbank
+Learning: The Mel filterbank matrix is ~98.5% sparse (only ~500 non-zero elements out of ~32k), making dense matrix multiplication extremely inefficient.
+Action: Always check for sparsity in fixed transform matrices (like Mel or DCT) and implement sparse iteration if sparsity > 90%.
diff --git a/src/mel.js b/src/mel.js
index c9bf174..e3fbd41 100644
--- a/src/mel.js
+++ b/src/mel.js
@@ -261,6 +261,32 @@ export class MelSpectrogram {
     this.hannWindow = createPaddedHannWindow(this.winLength, this.nFft);
     this.twiddles = precomputeTwiddles(this.nFft);
 
+    // Precompute sparse matrix indices (optimize for ~98.5% sparsity)
+    this._fbStart = new Int32Array(this.nMels);
+    this._fbEnd = new Int32Array(this.nMels);
+    for (let m = 0; m < this.nMels; m++) {
+      let start = 0;
+      let end = this.nFreqBins;
+      const offset = m * this.nFreqBins;
+
+      // Find first non-zero
+      for (let k = 0; k < this.nFreqBins; k++) {
+        if (this.melFilterbank[offset + k] !== 0) {
+          start = k;
+          break;
+        }
+      }
+      // Find last non-zero
+      for (let k = this.nFreqBins - 1; k >= 0; k--) {
+        if (this.melFilterbank[offset + k] !== 0) {
+          end = k + 1;
+          break;
+        }
+      }
+      this._fbStart[m] = start;
+      this._fbEnd[m] = end;
+    }
+
     // Pre-allocate reusable buffers
     this._fftRe = new Float64Array(this.nFft);
     this._fftIm = new Float64Array(this.nFft);
@@ -315,7 +341,7 @@ export class MelSpectrogram {
     // 4. STFT + Power + Mel + Log
     const rawMel = new Float32Array(this.nMels * nFrames);
     const { _fftRe: fftRe, _fftIm: fftIm, _powerBuf: powerBuf } = this;
-    const { hannWindow: window, melFilterbank: fb, nMels, twiddles: tw, nFft, nFreqBins, hopLength, logZeroGuard } = this;
+    const { hannWindow: window, melFilterbank: fb, nMels, twiddles: tw, nFft, nFreqBins, hopLength, logZeroGuard, _fbStart, _fbEnd } = this;
 
     for (let t = 0; t < nFrames; t++) {
       const offset = t * hopLength;
@@ -325,7 +351,8 @@ export class MelSpectrogram {
       for (let m = 0; m < nMels; m++) {
         let melVal = 0;
         const fbOff = m * nFreqBins;
-        for (let k = 0; k < nFreqBins; k++) melVal += powerBuf[k] * fb[fbOff + k];
+        // Optimization: only iterate over non-zero filterbank elements
+        for (let k = _fbStart[m]; k < _fbEnd[m]; k++) melVal += powerBuf[k] * fb[fbOff + k];
         rawMel[m * nFrames + t] = Math.log(melVal + logZeroGuard);
       }
     }