Deutsche Thomson-brandt Gmbh

Thomson Licensing

Thomson Licensing S.a.

Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation

Dolby International Ab

Jens Spille

Johannes Boehm

Ernst F Schroder

Hans-Joachim Platte

Jürgen Schmidt

Malte Borsum

Ingo Hütter

Johannes Böhm

Marco Winter

Dirk Adolph

Axel Kochale

Heinz-Werner Keesen

Dietmar Hepper

Fritz Weisser

Dietmar Uhde

Jurgen Kaaden

Holger Kropp

Wulf-Christian Streckenbach

Ernst F Schröder

Kai Dorau

Rolf Schiering

Johannes B&ouml;hm

Sigrun Otte-Spille

Juergen Schmidt

Klaus Goken

Ernst F Schroeder

Audio signals are recorded with microphones receiving acoustic information from one or more directions. The corresponding audio signals can be pre-listened to in production studios. However, Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA) audio signals are matrixed in such a way that the matrixing prevents listening to the matrixed sound signals without dematrixing the matrixed sound signals. For enabling a sound engineer to listen to such a matrixed signal without full HOA decoding, an informative audio signal is added together with related side information data at encoding side to a selected part of the matrixed signal. This informative audio signal is removed before the inverse matrixing process at decoding side.

Making available a sound signal for higher order ambisonics signals

An optical microphone comprises a light source configured to emit a light beam and an acoustic sensor configured to reflect the light beam. The acoustic sensor includes single-wall nanotubes and deflects in response to pressure waves. An optional reflector of the optical microphone is configured to re-reflect the light beam from the acoustic sensor. A detector is configured to detect the light beam from the acoustic sensor or the reflector, and thus measures the pressure waves.

Optical microphone and method using the same

A method and an input-output device are proposed for rendering content. Further, a servicing device is proposed for delivering pre-rendered content. For rendering, a portion of processing or memorizing resources of said input-output device is allocated such that remaining resources of said input-output device are sufficient for maintaining the input-output capability of the device. Then, it is determined that an amount of resources required for rendering exceeds the allocated resources and a corresponding degree of pre-rendering is determined, too. On the serving device, pre-rendering of the content according to the determined degree is performed and the pre-rendered content is delivered from the serving device to the input-output device. Since server-side rendering is limited to a required degree, bandwidth constraints can be met more easily. Furthermore, rendering occurs more distributed and can be adjusted dynamically, thus, response time can be reduced.

Method and input-output device for rendering at least one of audio, video and computer graphics content and servicing device for delivering at least one of pre-rendered audio, pre-rendered video and pre-rendered computer graphics content

Method for describing the composition of audio signals, which are encoded as separate audio objects. The arrangement and the processing of the audio objects in a sound scene is described by nodes arranged hierarchically in a scene description. A node specified only for spatialization on a 2D screen using a 2D vector describes a 3D position of an audio object using said 2D vector and a 1D value describing the depth of said audio object. In a further embodiment a mapping of the coordinates is performed, which enables the movement of a graphical object in the screen plane to be mapped to a movement of an audio object in the depth perpendicular to said screen plane.

Method for describing the composition of audio signals

A parametric description describing the wideness of a non-point sound source is generated and linked with the audio signal of said sound source. A presentation of said non-point sound source by multiple decorrelated point sound sources at different positions is defined. Different diffuseness algorithms are applied for ensuring a decorrelation of the respective outputs. According to a further embodiment primitive shapes of several distributed uncorellated sound sources are defined, e.g. a box, a sphere and a cylinder. The width of a sound source can also be defined by an opening-angle relative to the listener. Furthermore, the primitive shapes can be combined to do more complex shapes.

Method for coding and decoding the wideness of a sound source in an audio scene

In the MPEG-4 standard ISO/IEC 14496:2001 several audio objects that can be coded with different MPEG-4 format coding types can together form a composed audio system representing a single soundtrack from the several audio substreams. In a receiver the multiple audio objects are decoded separately, but not directly played back to a listener. Instead, transmitted instructions for mixdown are used to prepare a single soundtrack. Mixdown conflicts can occur in case the audio signals to be combined have different channel numbers or configurations. According to the invention an additional audio channel configuration node is used that tags the correct channel configuration information items to the decoded audio data streams to be presented. The invention enables the content provider to set the channel configuration in such a way that the presenter at receiver side can produce a correct channel presentation under all circumstances. An escape code value in the channel configuration data facilitates correct handling of not yet defined channel combinations.

Method and apparatus for processing two or more initially decoded audio signals received or replayed from a bitstream

The invention relates to a storage medium on which a set of data is stored, whereby a first data section of the data set is stored in a read-only memory area and a second data section of the data set is stored in a read/write memory area, and the data set comprises language-independent data and language-dependent data. The data set can be processed in a handling device either in a first processing form related to a first language, or in a different processing form related to a second language. Language-independent data and language-dependent data which are related to the first language are included in the first data section, and language-dependent data which are related to the second language are included in the second data section. For the processing in different form, data from the second data section as well as data from the first data section are to be used.

Storage medium and method for processing data of such storage medium

A method for calling up information about current radio and television programs wherein desired signals are transmitted together or separately with decodable additional information signals. The method includes the steps of selecting from the additional information signals that information which is directly or indirectly linked to time information. The selected information is compared with a time period which can be predetermined and within which the current time and/or the time assigned to the current program occurs. The information corresponding to this time period is then displayed on a display device of a receiving device which receives the desired signals and additional information signals. The information is displayed in response to depressing a call up key of an associated receiving device or remote controller one or more times, such that at least two fields selected from the group consisting of start time, stop time, title, and remaining run time are displayed on a portion of the display device, while another portion of the display device displays information associated with the desired signals of a current channel which the receiving device is tuned to.

Method for calling up information about current radio and television programmes

For the purpose of spatial reproduction of an audio signal, the latter must be projected onto the positions of the existing loudspeakers. It is desirable in this case not to have to be fixed on a specific loudspeaker configuration for transmitting the audio signal. However, a problem here is that a multiplicity of possible combinations exists. In the method according to the invention, the sound sources ( ) are interpreted as acoustic objects for the purpose of projecting them onto an arbitrary loudspeaker configuration ( ). Here, an acoustic object consists in that in addition to the audio signal a sound source is assigned an item of spatial information which specifies a virtual, spatial position of the sound source. In order to reproduce an acoustic object, the spatial information of the sound source and the actual position of a loudspeaker are used to calculate the virtual distance from the sound source via the loudspeaker to the hearer ( ). Before reproduction, separate processing ( ) of the audio signal for each loudspeaker is then performed for each acoustic object.

Method and device for projecting sound sources onto loudspeakers

For audio coding, the MPEG-2 standard provides for a spatial representation by multi-channel reproduction. In order to ensure backwards compatibility with MPEG-1 signals, the signals of the multi-channel sound channels are matrixed. Before being matrixed, the audio signals generally have their levels reduced in order to prevent overdriving. In order to balance again the reduction at the encoder end, an option that is provided in the MPEG-2 standard is for a decoder to raise the output levels again. If, however, a transmission error then occurs in the multi-channel section, the decoder cannot carry out the reverse matrixing. In that case, only the MPEG-1-compatible signal component will be decoded. The auditory impression can therefore be disturbed in various ways during the changeover to MPEG-1 decoding. According to the invention, in the event of errors being detected in the supplementary signals, a portion of the multi-channel audio signals is cross-faded to the MPEG-1-compatible signal components and/or a further portion of the multi-channel audio signals is set to zero, in which case, at the decoder end, level raising of the MPEG-1-compatible signal components can be effected prior to the cross-fading of the multi-channel audio signals.

Method and apparatus for error masking in multi-channel audio signals

A method for encoding a digitized audio signal which includes the step of selecting one of two or more psycho acoustic model provided for generating masking thresholds used in a data reduction process. The selecting criterion is the available data rate for the encoded bit stream. Each one of the two or more psycho acoustic models is adapted to a specific data rate of the encoded bit stream. In a second embodiment, the method includes the step of combining two or more masking thresholds resulting from different psycho acoustic models, thereby leading to a more accurate calculation of a masking threshold for the data reduction process. Further, there are appropriate apparatuses for the encoding of digitized audio signals.

Method and apparatus for encoding digital signals employing bit

A cassette for use with a recording apparatus comprises: a housing for a recording medium, the housing having a first surface and side walls, the recording medium being accessible through one of the side walls; at least a part of a chip card affixed to the housing, forming a second surface of the housing and closing the cassette, the chip card part having a memory formed integrally therewith and externally accessible contacts; and, the contacts of the chip card being positioned on the second surface to be engageable by corresponding contacts in the recording apparatus when the cassette is inserted therein. One of the side walls has an access door for the recording medium and the second surface forms an upper wall of the housing as defined by the access door. The part of the chip card forming the second surface of the housing has a marking position at which light transmissivity can be controlled. The marking position can be rendered non transmissive to light to prevent recording.

Cassette including a recording medium for a recording apparatus

A method of simultaneously transmitting and decoding an audio signal and an auxiliary signal which is inseparable from the audio signal includes the step of allocating a loudness level to the audio signal which is higher than the level of the auxiliary signal whereby the auxiliary signal is inaudible during playback of the audio signal and does not deteriorate the playback of the audio signal. The audio signal is encoded by dividing it into a number of frequency bands. The auxiliary signal is transmitted in one of the frequency bands at a level much lower than the level of the audio signal.

Method for the compatible transmission and/or storage and decoding of an

Recording device with electrical contacts

In a broadcast receiver, a dynamic compression of the signal is switched on or off in dependence on whether such a compression has been carried out at the transmitting end. An identification bit is transmitted for identifying this compression at the transmitter end. The object is to create a broadcast receiver which effects automatic switching-on or switching-off of an amplitude compression but manages without a transmitted identification bit. The received audio signal is applied to a signal analysing circuit which determines the scale factors of the signal and generates switching voltages dependent on the scale factors. The present invention has particular applicability for broadcast receivers in a motor vehicle or with subsequent signal recording.

Growing community of inventors

Hemmingen, Germany

Jens Spille