Did You Know...
...that several people are credited with the invention of the flush toilet? Most people have heard of Thomas Crapper (1837-1910), the sanitary engineer who invented the valve-and-siphon arrangement that made the modern toilet possible. Another claimant to "the throne" was British inventor Alexander Cumming who patented a toilet in 1775. Then there's a nameless Minoan (a native of ancient Crete) who lived 4,000 years ago who supposedly was ahead of his time and created the first flush toilet!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8116463 | Method and apparatus for detecting audio signals A method and an apparatus for detecting audio signals are disclosed. The input audio signal is inspected to check whether it is a foreground frame or a background frame; the detected background signal is further inspected according to the music eigenvalue and the de... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8116461 | Sound volume automatic adjustment method and system A control method to automatically adjust the volume of a sound transmitter based on the measurement and the computation of the acoustic statistics of the room where the sound is emitted. The system comprises at least one sensor, a calculator determining statistics o... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8116462 | Method and system of real-time identification of an audiovisual advertisement in a data stream Method and system of identification of at least one audiovisual advertisement in a data stream, such as a digital television broadcasting, by detecting energy drops in an audio stream of the data stream and comparing a segment of the audio stream starting at the ene... | 02/14/2012 |
| 8098832 | Apparatus and method for detecting sound An apparatus for detecting sound includes a plurality of microphones, a sound inspecting unit, a direction estimating unit, a background noise removing unit, and an alerting unit. The microphones are used to collect sounds around a user. The sound inspecting unit is... | 01/17/2012 |
| 8098831 | Visual feedback in electronic entertainment system The presentation of visual feedback in an electronic entertainment system is disclosed. One disclosed embodiment relates to a method of providing user feedback in an electronic entertainment system, wherein the method comprises inviting an input from a user, receivi... | 01/17/2012 |
| 8090111 | Signal separator, method for determining output signals on the basis of microphone signals, and computer program A signal separator, a method and computer product for determining a first output signal describing an audio content of a useful-signal source in a first microphone signal, and for determining a second output signal describing an audio content of the useful-signal so... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8090110 | Method and apparatus for determining sound standard for input sound signal A method for determining a sound standard for an input sound signal includes the following steps. Firstly, the input sound signal is filtered to obtain a first filtered signal corresponding to a first frequency and a second filtered signal corresponding to a second ... | 01/03/2012 |
| 8077872 | Headset visual feedback system A visual feedback system that activates a visual display when the sound pressure level from a headset attached to the system exceeds a preset level is provided, along with a method of using the same. The visual feedback system is interposed between the audio source ... | 12/13/2011 |
| 8073145 | Method and apparatus for separating sound-source signal and method and device for detecting pitch In a sound-source signal separating method, a target sound-source signal in an input audio signal is enhanced, the input audio signal being from a mixture of acoustic signals from a plurality of sound sources picked up by a plurality of sound pickup devices. The pit... | 12/06/2011 |
| 8073146 | Audio test apparatus and test method thereof An audio test apparatus, and an exemplary audio test method that includes: processing an audio file through two independent channels; outputting no signals from a left channel and from a right channel in a first time period; receiving noise signals from the left and... | 12/06/2011 |
| 8050413 | System and method for conditioning a signal received at a MEMS based acquisition device A system and method for monitoring for a specified frequency band is disclosed. The technology initially utilizes a micro-electromechanical system (“MEMS”) based acquisition device to monitor an environment. The MEMS device receives a signal from the environment... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8050415 | Method and apparatus for detecting audio signals A method and an apparatus for detecting audio signals are disclosed. The input audio signal is detected to determine whether it is a background frame. The detected background signal is further detected according to a music characterization value and a decision rule.... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8050414 | Robust pipe-strike pulse detector A method for discriminating a noise pulse from a background noise in which a signal of interest is converted to an envelope signal using an entropy-based envelope generator, which envelope signal is then integrated over a plurality of consecutive integrative periods... | 11/01/2011 |
| 8045720 | Method for dynamic determination of time constants, method for level detection, method for compressing an electric audio signal and hearing aid, wherein the method for compression is used The invention provides a method for dynamic determination of time constants to be used in a detection of the signal level of an input signal of unknown level in an electric circuit, comprising the following steps: —feed the input signal through an auxiliary level ... | 10/25/2011 |
| 8023661 | Self-adjusting and self-modifying addressable speaker A self-adjusting speaker integrated with an alarm system is provided. The self-adjusting speaker may be used to aurally monitor an area (such as monitoring the ambient noise in the vicinity of the speaker) and adjust the speaker accordingly. The circumstances under ... | 09/20/2011 |
| 8014536 | Audio source separation based on flexible pre-trained probabilistic source models Improved audio source separation is provided by providing an audio dictionary for each source to be separated. Thus the invention can be regarded as providing “partially blind” source separation as opposed to the more commonly considered “blind” source separ... | 09/06/2011 |
| 7983426 | Method for autonomously monitoring and reporting sound pressure level (SPL) exposure for a user of a communication device A method for monitoring and reporting sound pressure level exposure for a user of a first communication device (104) is implemented in one embodiment when the device measures a sound pressure level (SPL) of the surrounding environment. The device stores at le... | 07/19/2011 |
| 7983425 | Method and system for acoustic shock detection and application of said method in hearing devices The present invention provides a method for detecting acoustic shock in an audio input signal (s(t)), comprising the steps of monitoring the input signal (s(t)) in the time-domain. Thereby detecting the signal floor (Sn), detecting the peak level of the input signal... | 07/19/2011 |
| 7953228 | Automatic audio systems for fire detection and diagnosis, and crew and person locating during fires A system and method that use audio feedback from a region being monitored can provide location information pertaining to fire or individuals in the region. Units of a public address system can each be equipped with a microphone. Audio from the microphones can be pro... | 05/31/2011 |
| 7936884 | Replay device and method with automatic sentence segmentation A replay device and method thereof with automatic sentence segmentation is provided. A soundwave analysis module receives a soundwave signal and analyzes the soundwave signal to determine plural segmentation points. A replay actuation module receives a replay comman... | 05/03/2011 |
| 7916874 | Gain adjusting method and a gain adjusting device In a gain adjusting method and a gain adjusting device for adjusting gain of a processed voice signal that is obtained by signal processing of an input voice signal, a masking power of the processed voice signal is computed, and | 03/29/2011 |
| 7912226 | Automatic measurement of audio presence and level by direct processing of an MPEG data stream Automatic measurements are made of audio presence and level in an audio signal by direct processing of an MPEG data stream representing the audio signal, without reconstructing the audio signal. Sub-band data is extracted from the data stream, and the extracted sub-... | 03/22/2011 |
| 7876907 | Apparatus for fault detection for parallelly transmitted audio signals and apparatus for delay difference detection and adjustment for parallelly transmitted audio signals Characteristic amounts in each small region of audio signals transmitted in the working system and the standby system are extracted by characteristic amount calculators 6-1, 6-2. A characteristic amount comparator 7 compares the character... | 01/25/2011 |
| 7864967 | Sound quality correction apparatus, sound quality correction method and program for sound quality correction According to one embodiment, various feature parameters are calculated for distinguishing between a speech and music and between music and background sound for an input audio signal. With the feature parameters, score determination is made as to whether the input au... | 01/04/2011 |
| 7817803 | Methods and devices for hearing damage notification and intervention At least one exemplary embodiment is directed to a method of monitoring hearing health comprising: measuring a first acoustic sound pressure level due to an ambient audio signal; measuring a second acoustic sound pressure level due to an emitted audio signal from a ... | 10/19/2010 |
| 7783053 | Level meter displaying method and level meter apparatus A level meter displaying method which is capable of changing the rate of change in the angle or position of an indicator in at least one particular input signal level range. A scale image obtained according to a function which nonlinearly varies with a signal level ... | 08/24/2010 |
| 7769182 | Method and system for comparing audio signals and identifying an audio source A method for defining an index of a match between a content of two audio sources, comprising: sampling audio from a first source and a second source generating a first and second set of samples; selecting a sequential number of samples N belonging to the first set o... | 08/03/2010 |
| 7751573 | Clip state display method, clip state display apparatus, and clip state display program A clip state display method which is capable of quickly identifying a clipping point and changing settings of signal processing. It is detected whether a clip occurs in any of signals of a plurality of input channels on which at least one of signal processing and mi... | 07/06/2010 |
| 7711123 | Segmenting audio signals into auditory events In one aspect, the invention divides an audio signal into auditory events, each of which tends to be perceived as separate and distinct, by calculating the spectral content of successive time blocks of the audio signal (5-1), calculating the difference... | 05/04/2010 |
| 7680283 | Method and system for detecting a predetermined sound event such as the sound of breaking glass A method and system for detecting a predetermined sound event, such as the sound of breaking glass. Data representing monitored sounds is stored, such as in a circular buffer, while a preliminary assessment is made in real time as to whether the monitored sounds pot... | 03/16/2010 |
| 7672464 | Locating and correcting undesirable effects in signals that represent time-based media The invention describes a graphical method for detecting and adjusting audio overload conditions. The graphical user interface provides a user complete playback control of several audio tracks, detection of overload conditions such as audio clipping, and graphical m... | 03/02/2010 |
| 7567676 | Sound event detection and localization system using power analysis The beginning detection, accommodation and frequency bias properties of the human hearing mechanism have been modeled to create systems that can detect directional transients (“sound events”) in a sound field and localize them. These systems break down a sound f... | 07/28/2009 |
| 7499554 | Electronic devices, methods, and computer program products for detecting noise in a signal based on autocorrelation coefficient gradients An electronic device can be operated to detect noise, such as wind noise. A microphone signal is generated by a microphone. Autocorrelation coefficients are determined based on the microphone signal. Gradient values are determined from the autocorrelation coefficien... | 03/03/2009 |
| 7499553 | Sound event detector system The beginning detection, accommodation and frequency bias properties of the human hearing mechanism have been modeled to create systems that can detect directional transients (“sound events”) in a sound field and localize them. These systems break down a sound f... | 03/03/2009 |
| 7492908 | Sound localization system based on analysis of the sound field The beginning detection, accommodation and frequency bias properties of the human hearing mechanism have been modeled to create systems that can detect directional transients (“sound events”) in a sound field and localize them. These systems break down a sound f... | 02/17/2009 |
| 7457422 | Method and implementation for detecting and characterizing audible transients in noise A method and implementation for detecting and characterizing audible transients in noise includes placing a microphone in a desired location, producing a microphone signal wherein the microphone signal is indicative of the acoustic environment, processing the microp... | 11/25/2008 |
| 7437935 | Continuous chatter boundary criteria for manufactured parts A chatter boundary system includes a measuring module, a comparison module, and a boundary module. The measuring module measures and collects samples of undulations in a manufactured part. The comparison module classifies a sound signal generated by the undulations ... | 10/21/2008 |
| 7430004 | Volume control linked with zoom control Digital cameras and methods wherein volume control is linked with zoom control. The present invention captures audio along with recorded images at different zoom settings, and upon playback adjusts the sound output volume (audio apparatus gain) based upon the zoom c... | 09/30/2008 |
| 7428310 | Audio output adjusting device of home theater system and method thereof A home theater system, an audio output adjusting device of a home theater system and methods thereof allow a prescribed or three-dimension audio configuration state for at least one prescribed position even when the prescribed location and/or a configuration of the ... | 09/23/2008 |
| 7426417 | Method and apparatus for efficiently accounting for the temporal nature of audio processing Some embodiments of the invention provide a computer system for processing an audio track. This system includes at least one DSP for processing the audio track. It also includes an application for editing the audio track. To process audio data in a first interval of... | 09/16/2008 |
