Did You Know...
...that the Eveready Battery began as an invention called the "electric flowerpot," which was a tube with a battery and light bulb inside? The idea was to fasten this gizmo to the side of a flowerpot so it would illuminate the flowers from the bottom. The idea died on the vine and the businessman who licensed the flower pot, Conrad Huber, was left with a pile of useless tubes -- until he found a way to market them as batteries to light the world!
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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8189802 | Digital filtering in a Class D amplifier system to reduce noise fold over An improved power amplifier system is provided. The power amplifier system includes a programmable digital filter and a power amplifier, each responsive to a plurality of frequency response settings and switching frequency settings, respectively. Each frequency resp... | 05/29/2012 |
| 8180064 | System and method for providing voice equalization Systems and methods for providing voice equalization are provided. In exemplary embodiments, acoustic signals are received from both a near-end and a far-end environment. A power spectrum estimate for the far-end signal and a noise estimate based on the near-end sig... | 05/15/2012 |
| 8170230 | Reducing audio masking This specification describes technologies relating to reducing audio masking. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of receiving a primary audio signal and a secondary audio s... | 05/01/2012 |
| 8165314 | Audio output apparatus and audio output method An audio output apparatus includes a masking band determining unit configured to determine a first frequency band in which masking due to environmental sounds is likely to occur in audio signal output sounds; a band-component extracting unit configured to extract a ... | 04/24/2012 |
| 8107639 | System and method for a sound masking system for networked workstations or offices A sound masking system and method for providing sound masking in networked workstations or offices. The sound masking system comprises a communication network, a plurality of sound masking devices adapted to emit a sound masking signal, and a remote controller. One ... | 01/31/2012 |
| 8094829 | Method for processing sound data Masking thresholds are obtained for each frequency component of sound data and ambient noise. It is determined whether each frequency component of the sound data is masked by at least one of the other frequency components of the sound data. It is further determined ... | 01/10/2012 |
| 8059828 | Audio privacy method and system Provided is a method and system for audio privacy that includes receiving a first sound signal at a microphone proximal to a user's ear, generating a second sound signal based on the first sound signal and a stored filter, the second sound signal interfering with th... | 11/15/2011 |
| 8019092 | Aural device with white noise generator An aural device to be worn over the ear of a user during sleeping hours which generates white noise. ... | 09/13/2011 |
| 7804964 | Device for protecting the hearing from loud MRT sounds Device for protecting the hearing from loud MRT sounds Device for protecting the hearing from loud MRT sounds, with a protective sound generating device linked to the MRT electronics for generating a protective sound rising slowly in amplitude, increasing the... | 09/28/2010 |
| 7664274 | Enhanced acoustic transmission system and method A system to generate an enhanced acoustic transmission signal includes a carrier signal generator to generate a carrier signal. A data signal generator is provided to receive data and to generate a data signal representing the data. A signal modulator is also provid... | 02/16/2010 |
| 7492911 | Noise reducing device The present invention provides an active control type noise reducing device that is disposed at a sound barrier and with which can be obtained an excellent noise reduction effect with respect to moving sound sources. Linear array of flat loudspeakers are arranged in... | 02/17/2009 |
| 7471797 | Networked sound masking system with centralized sound masking generation A sound masking system for shaping the ambient noise level in a physical environment. The sound masking system comprises a networked and distributed system having a number of master units coupled together and to a control unit. One or more of the master units may in... | 12/30/2008 |
| 7460675 | Auto-adjusting sound masking system and method A system and method for generating a masking noise level and spectrum automatically adjusted to obtain a target masking noise spectrum in a room. The system comprises a white noise generator and a mask filter automatically determined according to a correction of an ... | 12/02/2008 |
| 7435228 | High fidelity hearing restoration Method for accurately measuring hearing loss includes the steps of selecting a series of audio tones within the normal range of hearing (502) and then measuring a relative sensitivity of a test subject with respect to the ability to hear each of the audio ton... | 10/14/2008 |
| 7352870 | Active sound muffler and active sound muffling method An active sound muffler for reducing a sound to be reduced as emitted from a sound source located at one of the opposite sides of a sound insulating wall and diffracted and transmitted to the other side, the muffler comprises a control loudspeaker arranged at the fr... | 04/01/2008 |
| 7332668 | Wavetable audio synthesis system The present invention relates to an audio synthesis system for performing wavetable audio synthesis. The system comprises an instrument database, an analysis module, a memory, a judgment module, and a synthesis module. The instrument database is used for storing dat... | 02/19/2008 |
| 7315812 | Method for determining the quality of a speech signal Objective measurement methods and devices for predicting perceptual quality of speech signals degraded in speech processing/transporting systems have unreliable prediction results in cases where the degraded and reference signals show in between severe timbre differ... | 01/01/2008 |
| 7302062 | Audio enhancement system An audio enhancement system for compensating for ambient noise in a listening environment, comprises an audio system that produces an electrical sound signal and generates a sound output from the electrical sound signal. A sensor (e.g., a microphone) senses a total ... | 11/27/2007 |
| 7302066 | Method for eliminating an unwanted signal from a mixture via time-frequency masking A method is presented for eliminating an unwanted signal (e.g., background music, interference, etc.) from a mixture of a desired signal and the unwanted signal via time-frequency masking. Given a mixture of the desired signal and the unwanted signal, the goal of th... | 11/27/2007 |
| 7260163 | Noise blanker using an adaptive all-pole predictor and method therefor A noise blanker (40, 106) monitors and removes noise from a sampled signal by adaptive filtering (98, 150) the sampled signal to generate trained adaptive filter prediction coefficients. The sampled signal is provided as an output signal when the noise... | 08/21/2007 |
| 7246239 | Digital watermarks for checking authenticity of printed objects The invention provides methods for embedding digital watermarks for authentication of printed objects, and corresponding methods for authenticating these objects. One aspect of the invention is a method of embedding a digital watermark in a digital image to be print... | 07/17/2007 |
| 7231037 | Active audio compressing in telecommunication An output reducing system for a telephone system, e.g., implemented in a headset, includes an input line and an output line, wherein the input line transmits an incoming signal to an output transducer and the output line transmits an outgoing signal from an input tr... | 06/12/2007 |
| 7200744 | Apparatus and method for controlling device operation in computer Disclosed is an apparatus and method for controlling driving of an auxiliary device in a computer. The computer would include an operating system (OS) having at least one of a keyboard controller driver and a system BIOS that controls the enabled/disabled status of ... | 04/03/2007 |
| 7194094 | Sound masking system A sound masking system according to the invention is disclosed in which one or more sound masking loudspeaker assemblies are coupled to one or more electronic sound masking signal generators. The loudspeaker assemblies in the system of the invention have a low direc... | 03/20/2007 |
| 7181022 | Audio watermarking to convey auxiliary information, and media embodying same Methods of processing audio to convey auxiliary information therein without audible evidence of data alteration. Various arrangements are disclosed. One receives plural bit auxiliary data in which the auxiliary information is included, and modulates a carrier signal... | 02/20/2007 |
| 7181021 | Apparatus for acoustically improving an environment The invention provides an apparatus and related method for acoustically improving an environment. In an embodiment of the present invention, an electronic sound screening system includes a portion for receiving acoustic energy and converting it into electrical signa... | 02/20/2007 |
| 7143028 | Method and system for masking speech A simple and efficient method for producing an obfuscated speech signal which may be used to mask a stream of speech, is disclosed. A speech signal representing the speech stream to be masked is obtained. The speech signal is then temporally partitioned into segment... | 11/28/2006 |
| 7134067 | Apparatus and method for allowing a direct decode of fire and similar codes The present invention describes direct decoding of Error Correction Codes (ECC) such as, for example, FIRE and similar codes, and detecting and correcting errors occurring in burst, without requiring any pattern shift or sequential logic. According to the present in... | 11/07/2006 |
| 7106867 | Active noise cancellation for a vehicle induction system having selectable engine noise profile An active noise cancellation system (26) for controlling engine noise propagation through a vehicle induction system (32) is customizable to achieve a desired engine noise profile. A controller (34) of the active noise cancellation system drives... | 09/12/2006 |
| 7106868 | Active noise control for vehicle door noise An active noise control system (100) and method modifies a noise made when a vehicle closure, such as a door, hood, or trunk, closes by detecting the closure's velocity and selecting a delay time and control noise amplitude appropriate for the velocity. By mo... | 09/12/2006 |
| 7088828 | Methods and apparatus for providing privacy for a user of an audio electronic device The invention is directed to techniques for suppressing the voice of a user of an audio electronic device, such as a mobile phone, from being heard by an unintended listener. In one arrangement, the invention includes an input microphone, an electronics module, and ... | 08/08/2006 |
| 7054463 | Data encoding using frail watermarks Image, video, or audio data is encoded with both a frail and a robust watermark. The two watermarks respond differently to different forms of processing (e.g., copying the object may render the frail watermark unreadable), permitting an original object to be disting... | 05/30/2006 |
| 7050603 | Watermark encoded video, and related methods Watermarks in video signals or the accompanying audio track are used to associate video objects in a video sequence with object specific actions or information. A video object refers to a spatial and temporal portion of a video signal that depicts a recognizable obj... | 05/23/2006 |
| 7039478 | Method and system for authoring a soundscape for a media application A method and system are provided for allowing a sound designer to design and implement interactive soundscapes based on existing waveform audio files, MIDI files, or audio streams. This is accomplished by using a set of tools consisting of an authoring tool for crea... | 05/02/2006 |
| 6975732 | Audio signal reproducing apparatus A small-sized audio signal reproducing apparatus for hearing reproduced audio signals with the aid of a headphone is disclosed. Digitized and compression encoded audio signals, stored in a semiconductor memory, are read out so as to undergo a decoding operation, whi... | 12/13/2005 |
| 6967594 | Sensory monitor with embedded messaging elements A system for measuring human perception at edges of awareness includes a message transmitter providing embedded pre-semantic messages having a predetermined meaning or a predetermined object representation for visual priming, the messages being embedded within supra... | 11/22/2005 |
| 6950526 | Sound masking and paging system The new speaker system includes masking capabilities, as well as optional paging capabilities and has a speaker mounted so as to be upwardly directed on a support plate or rack within a ceiling plenum, with an optional low profile backbox. An optional paging speaker... | 09/27/2005 |
| 6944298 | Steganographic encoding and decoding of auxiliary codes in media signals One aspect of the invention is a method of decoding an auxiliary code embedded in an audio signal. The method performs a statistical decoding of a multibit auxiliary code embedded in an audio signal. The auxiliary code has been repetitively embedded in the audio sig... | 09/13/2005 |
| 6917691 | Substituting information based on watermark-enable linking OLE-like principles are implemented using watermark data in digital objects in order to effect object linking or embedding. In one embodiment, a photocopier scans an original paper document to produce image data. This image data is analyzed for the presence of water... | 07/12/2005 |
| 6888945 | Personal sound masking system A sound masking system for a multi-occupant work area includes a masking signal generator generating incoherent masking sound signals loudspeaker modules interconnected in a daisy-chain fashion, with each loudspeaker module receiving the masking sound signals on inp... | 05/03/2005 |
