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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 8428272 | Masking sound generating apparatus, masking system, masking sound generating method, and program In a masking sound generating apparatus, a band divider divides a target sound signal into a plurality of frequency bands to generate a plurality of band signals. An envelope signal generating part generates a plurality of envelope signals representing respective en... | 04/23/2013 |
| 8355514 | Audio encoding to convey auxiliary information, and media embodying same Methods of processing audio to convey auxiliary information hidden therein are provided. Various arrangements are disclosed. One alters data representing audio to include a sequence of bits of auxiliary information. The altering is based on a carrier signal and corr... | 01/15/2013 |
| 8306237 | Head-mounting device to mask ambient sounds for sleeping This invention is a wearable device that masks and/or cancels annoying ambient sounds to help a person sleep. It includes a soft and stretchable member, such as a headband or hat, that contains one or more sound-conducting tubes. Sound that is emitted from the one o... | 11/06/2012 |
| 8295504 | Methods and devices for fan control of an electronic device based on loudness data Disclosed are methods and devices for controlling the state of a fan of an electronic device during audio output based in whole or in part on loudness data of a digital audio file. An audio data file is sampled so that loudness data is determined from the sample aud... | 10/23/2012 |
| 8280069 | Noise reduction apparatus In a noise reduction apparatus for controlling noise up to a predetermined upper limited frequency, a distance from a noise source to control point X is made larger than a distance obtained by subtracting a one-half wavelength from a distance, obtained by adding up ... | 10/02/2012 |
| 8280068 | Ambient audio transformation using transformation audio A method and device for transforming ambient audio are provided. Example embodiments may include monitoring ambient audio proximate to a sound processing device located in an environment. The device may analyze the ambient audio to derive one or more first character... | 10/02/2012 |
| 8280067 | Integrated ambient audio transformation device A method and device for transforming ambient audio are provided. Example embodiments may include monitoring ambient audio proximate to a sound processing device located in an environment. The device may access memory to obtain transformation audio and generate outpu... | 10/02/2012 |
| 8254590 | System and method for intelligibility enhancement of audio information A method for processing an input signal to create an enhanced output signal includes obtaining an envelope of the input signal, determining a logarithm signal of the envelope, determining a rate of change of the logarithm signal to obtain a slope value, and applying... | 08/28/2012 |
| 8243944 | Foldable wireless voice muffling device for mobile communications A handheld foldable voice-muffling device using passive noise silencing materials to dampen noise and a microphonic transceiver to transmit a user's speech and receive incoming signals allowing him to wirelessly communicate with another person or other communication... | 08/14/2012 |
| 8238569 | Method, medium, and apparatus for extracting target sound from mixed sound A method, medium, and apparatus for extracting a target sound from a mixed sound. The method includes obtaining the mixed signal from a microphone array, generating a first signal which is emphasized and directed toward a target sound source, and a second signal whi... | 08/07/2012 |
| 8229129 | Method, medium, and apparatus for extracting target sound from mixed sound A method, medium, and apparatus for extracting a target sound from mixed sound. The method includes receiving a mixed signal through a microphone array, generating a first signal whose directivity is emphasized toward a target sound source and a second signal whose ... | 07/24/2012 |
| 8229130 | Distributed acoustic conversation shielding system A conversation shielding system comprises sensors that detect the location of a confidential conversation and the presence and location of a potential eavesdropper, audio output devices that produce masking sounds to shield the conversation from the eavesdropper, an... | 07/24/2012 |
| 8223985 | Masking of pure tones within sound from a noise generating source A method and system for masking pure tones within sound generated from a noise generating source. The method includes detecting one or more pure tones within sound being generated from the noise generating source, and generating one or more masking sounds capable of... | 07/17/2012 |
| 8218783 | Masking based gain control Interfering signals that may be present in a listening environment are masked by reproducing a desired signal in a listening environment, determining a masking threshold associated with the desired signal, identifying an interfering signal that may be present in the... | 07/10/2012 |
| 8194874 | In-room acoustic magnitude response smoothing via summation of correction signals A system and method are provided for smoothing the in-room acoustic magnitude response of an audio reproduction system. An in-room acoustic magnitude response analysis is performed to determine a room resonance induced peak associated with an audio signal. A replica... | 06/05/2012 |
| 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 |
