Sennheiser Electronic Gmbh & Co Kg

Audience, Inc.

Marios Athineos

Michael Lee

Carlos M Avendano

Alexander Krüger

Alexander Nowak

Eugen Rasumow

Microphone arrays comprise several microphone capsules, the outputs of which being electronically combined for directional recording of sound. The directional and frequency properties of the microphone array depend on the number and positions of the microphone array. In order to obtain the smallest possible microphone array with only few microphone capsules, which, however, has an essentially uniform directional and frequency dependence over a speech frequency range, is scalable and robust against small incorrect positioning of the capsules, fifteen or twenty-one microphone capsules (K-K, K-K) are arranged on a carrier such that they lie on three similar branches, each with the same number of microphone capsules, which are rotated against each other by 120&#xb0;. Each of the microphone capsules lies on a corner of a triangle of a grid in a flat isometric coordinate system with three axes rotated by 120&#xb0; against each other and forming the grid of equilateral triangles.

Microphone array

During telephone calls in a public space, users may be reluctant to provide private or secret information, due to the risk of eavesdropping. A hands-free solution for entering secret information to electronic speech communication devices is based on speech processing. A method for speech processing a voice input data stream comprises steps of scanning the voice input data stream and detecting a spoken delimiter therein, determining a predefined audio sample corresponding to the detected spoken delimiter, inserting the determined predefined audio sample into the voice input data stream at the spoken delimiter, wherein a substituted voice data stream is obtained and wherein speech portions of the voice input data stream at least before the spoken delimiter remain in the substituted voice data stream, and providing the substituted voice data stream for output towards a recipient.

Method for speech processing and speech processing device

Microphone arrays with automatic beam focusing may easily focus on disturbing sound sources. In order to prevent this unwanted behavior, a predefined control sound signal is replayed from a direction of a disturbing sound source. The microphone array detects the predefined control sound signal, determines the direction of replay and in response performs a re-configuration according to the control sound signal. The reconfiguration may comprise eliminating the direction from its scanning range or cancel a previously made elimination of a different direction.

Configurable microphone array and method for configuring a microphone array

Disclosed are methods and corresponding systems for audio processing of audio signals after applying a noise reduction procedure such as noise cancellation and/or noise suppression, according to various embodiments. A method may include calculating spectral envelopes for corresponding samples of an initial audio signal and the audio signal transformed by application of the noise cancellation and/or suppression procedure. Multiple spectral envelope interpolations may be calculated between these two spectral envelopes. The interpolations may be compared to predetermined reference spectral envelopes associated with predefined clean reference speech. One of the generated interpolations, which is the closest to one of the predetermined reference spectral envelopes, may be selected. The selected interpolation may be used for restoration of the transformed audio signal such that at least a part of the frequency spectrum of the transformed audio signal is modified to the levels of the selected interpolation.

Growing community of inventors

San Francisco, CA, United States of America

Marios Athineos