diff --git a/egs/librispeech/ASR/conformer_ctc/subsampling.py b/egs/librispeech/ASR/conformer_ctc/subsampling.py
index 2df2678dd..622495f21 100644
--- a/egs/librispeech/ASR/conformer_ctc/subsampling.py
+++ b/egs/librispeech/ASR/conformer_ctc/subsampling.py
@@ -336,6 +336,83 @@ class DerivBalancerFunction(torch.autograd.Function):
         return x_grad - neg_delta_grad, None, None, None, None
 
 
+class BasicNorm(torch.nn.Module):
+    """
+    This is intended to be a simpler, and hopefully cheaper, replacement for
+    LayerNorm.  The observation this is based on, is that Transformer-type
+    networks, especially with pre-norm, sometimes seem to set one of the
+    feature dimensions to a large constant value (e.g. 50), which "defeats"
+    the LayerNorm because the output magnitude is then not strongly dependent
+    on the other (useful) features.  Presumably the weight and bias of the
+    LayerNorm are required to allow it to do this.
+
+    So the idea is to introduce this large constant value as an explicit
+    parameter, that takes the role of the "eps" in LayerNorm, so the network
+    doesn't have to do this trick.
+
+    We also introduce a learned scaling factor on the output; and we
+    remove the subtracting-the-mean aspect of LayerNorm (which anyway, is not
+    that useful unless the LayerNorm immediately follows a nonlinearity).
+
+
+    Args:
+      channel_dim: the axis/dimension corresponding to the channel,
+        interprted as an offset from the input's ndim if negative.
+        shis is NOT the num_channels; it should typically be one of
+        {-2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3}.
+      initial_eps_scale:  a constant that determines the initial
+        "epsilon" that we add as ballast in:
+             scale = output_scale * ((input_vec**2).sum() + epsilon)**-0.5
+        Note: our epsilon is actually large, not small, but we keep the name
+        to indicate the connection with normal LayerNorm.  We set
+        epsilon initially to num_channels * initial_eps_scale.
+      speed:  a scaling factor that can be interpreted as scaling the learning
+        rate for this module.  CAUTION: the default value of 10.0 intended to be
+        used with Adam or amsgrad-type optimizers, e.g. Adam or Noam.
+        If you are using SGD you would probably have to set `speed` to
+        a value less than one, or the training would be unstable.
+    """
+    def __init__(self,
+                 num_channels: int,
+                 channel_dim: int = -1,  # CAUTION: see documentation.
+                 initial_eps_scale: float = 0.25,
+                 speed: float = 10.0):
+        super(BasicNorm, self).__init__()
+        self.num_channels = num_channels
+        self.channel_dim = channel_dim
+        self.speed = speed
+        eps = num_channels * initial_eps_scale
+        # log_eps = log(eps) / speed
+        log_eps = torch.tensor(eps).log() / speed
+        self.log_eps = nn.Parameter(log_eps.detach())
+        # initial output-scale, to get LayerNorm-like behavior, is
+        # sqrt(num_channels).
+        initial_scale = torch.tensor(num_channels ** 0.5).log() / speed
+        self.log_scale = nn.Parameter(initial_scale.detach())
+
+    def _inner(self, x: Tensor) -> Tensor:
+        # inner product on last dim of x, keeping the dimension,
+        # i.e. torch.sum(x**2, dim=-1, keepdim=True), but more
+        # efficient.
+        if hasattr(torch, 'inner'):
+            return torch.inner(x).unsqueeze(-1)
+        else:
+            # TODO: we can do this with matrix multiplication, maybe.a
+            return torch.sum(x**2, dim=-1, keepdim=True)
+
+
+    def forward(self, x: Tensor) -> Tensor:
+        assert x.shape[self.channel_dim] == self.num_channels
+        x = x.transpose(-1, self.channel_dim)
+        eps = (self.log_eps * self.speed).exp()
+        out_scale = (self.log_scale * self.speed).exp()
+
+        scales = out_scale * (self._inner(x) + eps) ** -0.5
+        x = x * scales
+        x = x.transpose(-1, self.channel_dim)
+        return x
+
+
 
 class DerivBalancer(torch.nn.Module):
     """
@@ -367,16 +444,16 @@ class DerivBalancer(torch.nn.Module):
 
 
 def _test_exp_scale_swish():
-    class Swish(torch.nn.Module):
+    class DoubleSwish(torch.nn.Module):
         def forward(self, x: Tensor) -> Tensor:
             """Return Swich activation function."""
-            return x * torch.sigmoid(x)
+            return x * torch.sigmoid(x - 1.0)
 
     x1 = torch.randn(50, 60).detach()
     x2 = x1.detach()
 
     m1 = ExpScaleSwish(50, 1, speed=4.0)
-    m2 = torch.nn.Sequential(Swish(), ExpScale(50, 1, speed=4.0))
+    m2 = torch.nn.Sequential(DoubleSwish(), ExpScale(50, 1, speed=4.0))
     x1.requires_grad = True
     x2.requires_grad = True
 
@@ -425,8 +502,26 @@ def _test_deriv_balancer():
     print("x grad = ", x.grad)
 
 
+def _test_basic_norm():
+    num_channels = 128
+    m = BasicNorm(num_channels=num_channels, channel_dim=1)
+
+    x = torch.randn(500, num_channels)
+
+    y = m(x)
+
+    assert y.shape == x.shape
+    x_rms = (x**2).mean().sqrt()
+    y_rms = (y**2).mean().sqrt()
+    print("x rms = ", x_rms)
+    print("y rms = ", y_rms)
+    assert y_rms < x_rms
+    assert y_rms > 0.5 * x_rms
+
+
 
 if __name__ == '__main__':
     _test_deriv_balancer()
     _test_exp_scale_swish()
     _test_exp_scale_relu()
+    _test_basic_norm()