diff --git a/gemma/gm/nn/gemma4/_modules.py b/gemma/gm/nn/gemma4/_modules.py
index ef93617f..40985464 100644
--- a/gemma/gm/nn/gemma4/_modules.py
+++ b/gemma/gm/nn/gemma4/_modules.py
@@ -162,8 +162,8 @@ def encode_vision(self, x: jax.Array) -> jax.Array:
 
   def encode_audio(self, x: jax.Array) -> jax.Array:
     """Projects audio embeddings to the embedding space of the text encoder."""
-    x = self.audio_input_projection('...tm,md->...td', x)
     x = self.audio_soft_embedding_norm(x)
+    x = self.audio_input_projection('...tm,md->...td', x)
     return x
 
   def encode_per_layer_input(