Sony Corporation

Yoshitomo Nakano

Kunio Shimizu

Satoshi Mita

Hiroshi Nishimura

Akio Morita

Akira Matsubara

Akira Nakayama

Takashi Nakatsuyama

Kouichi Tanaka

Harumi Saita

A recording and/or reproducing apparatus which includes no pinch roller and no capstan and wherein the converging time to a rated speed upon starting of feeding of a tape can be reduced and the tape can be fed stably at the rated speed during recording and/or reproduction of the tape. A rotary encoder for detecting a period of rotation is disposed between a recording and/or reproducing head and a take-up side reel, and a deviation from a predetermined reference value or a feeding position of the tape is calculated from the period of rotation detected by the rotary encoder.

Recording and reproducing apparatus having no capstan and no pinch

A recording and/or reproducing apparatus which includes no pinch roller and no capstan and wherein the converging time to a rated speed upon starting of feeding of a tape can be reduced and the tape can be fed stably at the rated speed during recording and/or reproduction of the tape. A rotary encoder for detecting a period of rotation is disposed between a recording and/or reproducing head and a take-up side reel, and a deviation from a predetermined reference value or a feeding position of the tape is calculated from the period of rotation detected by the rotary

Recording and/reproducing apparatus having no capstan and no pinch

Recording and/or reproducing apparatus having no capstan and no pinch

An automatic telephone answering machine which is capable of selecting a new outgoing message or an old outgoing message. If a new OGM is unsatisfactory, the operator may retain an old OGM and discard the new OGM. Both a semiconductor memory and a magnetic tape are utilized in switching the OGM's from one to the other. The OGM stored in the semiconductor memory is automatically checked and read out at least once at an end of storage of the OGM in the semiconductor memory, and thereafter the OGM is automatically read out again and transferred to and recorded in an area of a magnetic tape.

Automatic telephone answering apparatus

In an auto telephone answering apparatus for playing back an outgoing message recorded on a magnetic tape and sending the outgoing message to a calling party and for recording an incoming message from the calling party on the magnetic tape, an auto answer mode is set for automatically connecting telephone lines to the auto telephone answering apparatus upon detection of an incoming call from the calling party, playing the outgoing message recorded on the magnetic tape, and setting an incoming call wait state for recording the incoming message from the calling party on the magnetic tape after playback of the outgoing message, an end of playback of the incoming message or messages recorded on the magnetic tape is detected in a playback mode and results in an incoming message end signal, and a control causes establishment of the auto answer setting mode in response to the incoming message end signal.

Telephone answering device with automatic return to incoming message mode

A threshold level for determining whether an input audio signal is a speech or non-speech signal in a voice operated recorder is changed in accordance with the ratio of the non-speech duration of the input audio signal to a predetermined period of time so as to decrease the influence of ambient noise on the judgement between speech and non-speech signals as made by the voice operated recorder.

Circuit for determining that an audio signal is either speech or

An automatic telephone answering device employs a single magnetic tape and a single driving mechanism for driving the magnetic tape. Whenever an incoming call is received, a control circuit of the device sets the driving mechanism into a playback mode to play to the calling party an outgoing message recorded at the beginning of a track on the single magnetic tape. Then, if there have been no previously recorded incoming messages, the device records the calling party's incoming message after the end of the outgoing message. However, if any incoming messages have been recorded previously on the same track of the single magnetic tape, the tape is advanced at high speed to a point beyond the last of these previously-recorded incoming messages. Then, the present incoming message is recorded. As soon as the incoming call is ended, the device is set into a rewind mode. When the beginning of the recorded outgoing message is reached, the driving mechanism is stopped, and the device stands by to greet the next incoming call with the recorded message. In a preferred embodiment, a counter counts the rotations of a reel drive of the driving mechanism, and its contents are stored for points corresponding to the beginning and end of the outgoing message and the end of each recorded incoming message. The stored contents are then compared with the count on the counter during operation. A coder can be included to record a code identifying the sequence number of each incoming message.

Automatic telephone answering device

An automatic telephone answering device employs a single magnetic tape and a single driving mechanism for driving the magnetic tape. Whenever an incoming call is received, a control circuit of the device sets the driving mechanism into a playback mode to play to the calling party an outgoing message recorded at the beginning of a track on the single magnetic tape. Then, if there have been no previously recorded incoming messages, the device records the calling party's incoming message on the same track after detecting the end of the recorded outgoing message. However, if any incoming messages have been recorded previously on the same track of the single magnetic tape, the tape is advanced at high speed to a point beyond the last of these previously recorded incoming messages. Then, the present incoming message is recorded. As soon as the incoming call is terminated and the recording of the incoming message is ended, the device is set into a rewind mode. When the beginning of the recorded outgoing message is detected, the driving mechanism is stopped, and the device is set into a standby mode to greet the next incoming call with the recorded outgoing message. In a preferred embodiment, a microcomputer is used to control the operation of the device. Also, in a preferred embodiment, a low-frequency (30 Hz) control signal is recorded with the outgoing message and with the incoming messages, and the recorded messages are separated by silent regions free of any recorded control signal.

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Tokyo, Japan

Yoshitomo Nakano