Getgo, Inc.

Logmeln, Inc.

Patrick Vicinus

Florian Winterstein

Carlotta Anemüller

Florian Heese

Björn Völcker

A technique for reducing acoustic feedback in audio communications includes measuring variations in round-trip delay over an audio signal pathway. The technique varies a delay interval of an adjustable-delay element in real time based on the measured variations in round-trip delay, effectively canceling the delay variations. Further techniques are disclosed for detecting and eliminating howling frequencies which arise as a result of acoustic feedback in the audio signal pathway.

Reducing acoustic feedback over variable-delay pathway

One or more delay estimators are used to detect failure in a signal processing component, such as an acoustic echo canceller. A first delay estimator is used to generate i) an estimated post-processing delay between when a known audio signal was conveyed to a loudspeaker, and when a portion of the processed audio signal that includes the known audio signal was output from the signal processing component, and ii) a confidence level for the estimated post-processing delay. A failure of the signal processing component may be detected in response to the estimated post-processing delay exceeding a threshold. A second delay estimator may also be used to generate an estimated pre-processing delay and a confidence level for the estimated pre-processing delay for comparison to the estimated post-processing delay and confidence level for the estimated post-processing delay in order to provide further failure detection accuracy and specificity.

Detecting signal processing component failure using one or more delay estimators

An input ambisonic audio signal includes multiple channels, each of which is made up of audio data representing sound captured by an ambisonic microphone. A remote audio signal made up of audio data representing sound captured by remote meeting equipment is output by a local loudspeaker. Acoustic echo cancellation is performed on the input ambisonic audio signal by removing the remote audio signal from the input ambisonic audio signal. The acoustic echo cancellation may be performed on ambisonic A-format or B-format encoded audio data, or on an output encoding generated from the B-format encoded audio data. Comfort noise may be generated based on spectral and spatial characteristics of noise in the input audio data, for insertion into the input signal during acoustic echo cancellation. Automatic gain control may be performed across the multiple channels of the input audio signal.

Growing community of inventors

Friedrichsdorf, Germany

Patrick Vicinus