Telephone conferencing arrangement

Abstract

A high-fidelity audio telephone conferencing arrangement which provides talker position information is economically provided between telephone stations over a single standard digital telephone channel. Digitized high-fidelity audio is combined with digitized phase information, derived from talker position detecting circuitry in a local telephone station, and transmitted over the telephone channel to one or more remote telephone stations. A receiver in each remote station decodes the digital information and provides the high-fidelity audio signal to multiple spatially separated acoustic output devices. The digitized pulse information controls 'panning' of the audio signal among the acoustic output devices. By varying the level of audio signal flowing to each acoustic device, the position of the talker can be created in a specific position in the remote listener's sound field and the talker's identity thereby more easily determined. In addition, talker location information may be shared among multiple telephone stations participating in a telephone conference. Information as to the location of the talker along with the position of the talker is provided to each remotely located telephone station. The location of the talker is represented by the audio signal occurring in a designated general area of the remote listener's sound field and the position of the talker is represented by the creation of the audio signal in a specific position in this general area.