Apple Inc.

Soenke Pelzer

Dirk Schroeder

Christopher T Eubank

Joshua D Atkins

Jonathan D Sheaffer

Tomlinson M Holman

Juha O Merimaa

Prateek Murgai

Benjamin Bernard

David E Romblom

An audio device can sense sound in a physical environment using a plurality of microphones to generate a plurality of microphone signals. Clean speech can be extracted from microphone signals. Ambience can be extracted from the microphone signals. The clean speech can be encoded at a first compression level. The ambience can be encoded at a second compression level that is higher than the first compression level. Other aspects are also described and claimed.

Audio encoding with compressed ambience

Processing sound in an enhanced reality environment can include generating, based on an image of a physical environment, an acoustic model of the physical environment. Audio signals captured by a microphone array, can capture a sound in the physical environment. Based on these audio signals, one or more measured acoustic parameters of the physical environment can be generated. A target audio signal can be processed using the model of the physical environment and the measured acoustic parameters, resulting in a plurality of output audio channels having a virtual sound source with a virtual location. The output audio channels can be used to drive a plurality of speakers. Other aspects are also described and claimed.

Processing sound in an enhanced reality environment

A plurality of microphone signals of a microphone array may be obtained. An environment change may be detected based on the microphone signals. In response, a reverberation time environment may be determined. The reverberation may be used to modify a playback audio signal.

Logic for reverberation time estimation

Ray tracing is performed with sound sources and a listener position in a listening environment, to generate impulse responses associated with each of the sound sources. The impulse responses are combined to form a combined impulse response. One or more filters are determined, each corresponding to the sound sources, based on the combined impulse response and the impulse responses. Each filter serves as a correction factor that holds unique acoustic information for the sound source that the filter is associated with. The combined impulse response and the filters can be applied to one or more audio signals that contain the sound sources, resulting in audio having reverberation that is tailored to the various sound sources. Other aspects are described and claimed.

Ray tracing for shared reverberation

This disclosure relates to techniques for generating physically accurate auralization of sound propagation in complex environments, while accounting for important wave effects, such as sound absorption, sound scattering, and airborne sound insulation between rooms. According to some embodiments, techniques may be utilized to determine more accurate, e.g., 'acoustically-effective' room volumes that account for open windows, open doors, acoustic dead space, and the like. According to other embodiments disclosed herein, techniques may be utilized to perform optimized hybrid acoustical ray tracing, including grouping coherent rays by processing core. According to other embodiments disclosed herein, techniques may be utilized to translate simulated ray tracing results into natural-sounding reverberations by deriving and resampling spatial-time-frequency energy probability density functions that more accurately account for the laws of physics and then converting this data into a spatial impulse response function, which may then be used for realistic 3D audio reproduction, e.g., via headphones or loudspeakers.

Acoustically effective room volume

Real-time acoustical ray tracing

Spatial impulse response synthesis

A computer system having an electronic device determines a listener position within a computer-generated reality (CGR) setting that is to be aurally experienced by a user of the electronic device through at least one speaker. The system determines a source position of a virtual sound source within the CGR setting and determines a characteristic of a virtual object within the CGR setting, where the characteristic include a geometry of an edge of the virtual object. The system determines at least one edge-diffraction filter parameter for an edge-diffraction filter based on 1) the listener position, 2) the source position, and 3) the geometry. The system applies the edge-diffraction filter to an input audio signal to produce a filtered audio signal that accounts for edge-diffraction of sound produced by the virtual sound source within the CGR setting.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Soenke Pelzer