144results about How to "Easy to hear" patented technology

By monitoring the wind noise in a location in which a cellular telephone is operating and by applying noise reduction and/or cancellation protocols at the appropriate time via analog and/or digital signal processing, it is possible to significantly reduce wind noise entering into a communication system.

Disclosed is a sound output device for electric vehicle including a sound producing unit 11 for producing a sound, an information acquiring unit 12 for acquiring state information about the state of a vehicle or surroundings information about surroundings of the vehicle, and a control unit 13 for controlling a sound volume and an output direction of the sound produced by the sound producing unit 11 according to the vehicle state information or the surroundings information acquired by the information acquiring unit 12 to output the sound to outside the vehicle. Therefore, the sound output device for electric vehicle makes it easy for pedestrians and passengers each riding on a vehicle, such as a light vehicle or a motorbike, to hear the sound produced thereby, or can prevent neighboring residents from being put into an unpreferable situation.

An audio player includes a memory storing one or more audio data files and at least one personalized audio profile comprising for each ear a map of amplitude audio frequency profile. A file selector permits a user to select one or more of the stored audio data files and at least one of the personalized profiles. A data processor accesses the selected files and profiles from the memory and processes the selected files with the profile to generate a processed audio signal for each ear. An actuator reproduces the audio information stored in the processed audio signal as sound for each ear. Personalized profiles are produced by monitoring and storing the responses of users to audible signals having different frequencies.

The present universal wearable computing device relates to a hearing assistance system, device, method, and apparatus that provide a discreet approach to user hearing assistance, without relying on a conventional hearing aid. The hearing assistance system and the requisite electronics may be incorporated into frames that also function as eyeglasses with earphone(s) that may be connected to the frame to assist user hearing. An earphone may be configured with minimal electronics, such that a power source enable sound transmissions to the ear, is provided by a connection to the frame of the eyeglasses. In another example, the earphone is configured without any electronics and sound is transmitted to the user/listener's ear(s) via a psychoacoustic system. The sound quality of the transmissions to the earphones may be optimized using a tuning/equalizer application operating from a computing device, such as an app on a mobile device. The tuning/equalizer application can be used by the user/listener to optimize volume input levels to the earphone(s). The hearing assistance system may also protect from damaging environmental noise, provide heightened hearing capabilities, collect and process physiological and physical measurements, and provide communication capabilities for interacting with other computing devices.

A system and method for reducing or entirely canceling background or environmental noise from a voice transmission from a communications device. A communications device, such as a voice over internet or voice over packets mobile or wire lined telephone or cordless telephone, is configured with an environmental noise counterbalanced (correction) signal generator that is connected between a microphone and a continuous time quadrant multiplication. The original output of the microphone and a counterbalanced (correction) signal generated by the environmental noise counterbalanced (correction) signal generator are mixed together prior to being passed to a transmitter. In one embodiment a discrete time unit (discrete time processing) block with or without signal processing is provided between the microphone and the continuous time quadrant multiplication to help synchronize the timing of the signals to be mixed. In another embodiment a second microphone is employed to detect environmental noise.

A clear, high quality voice signal with a high signal-to-noise ratio is achieved by use of an adaptive noise reduction scheme with two microphones in close proximity. The method includes the use of two omini directional microphones in a highly directional mode, and then applying an adaptive noise cancellation algorithm to reduce the noise.

Provided are a hearing aid, signal processing method, and program that enable TV sound to be made easier for a hearing aid user to hear when wishing to watch TV, and a person's voice to be made easier to hear when wishing to converse with that person. A hearing aid (100) is provided with an other-person's speech detection section (150) that detects speech of a speaker other than the wearer using detected sound source direction information, an own-speech detection result, and a TV sound detection result, and a per-sound-source frequency calculation section (160) that calculates the frequency of each sound source using an own-speech detection result, TV sound detection result, other-speaker's speech detection result, and sound source direction information. A scene determination section (170) determines a scene to be a “conversation scene,”“TV viewing scene,” and “‘TV viewing while . . . ’ scene” using sound source direction information and the per-sound-source frequency, and an output sound control section (180) controls hearing of the hearing aid (100) according to a determined scene.

A sound input device includes a differential microphone, configured to receive sound including noise, and generate a first signal in accordance with the sound; a detector, configured to detect the noise, and generate a second signal in accordance with the detected noise; and a controller, configured to control at least one of suppression of high-frequency components of the first signal and changing of a frequency band to be suppressed of the first signal based on the second signal.

While the amplification factor of an external amplifier is increased to raise the minimum volume level, synthesized speech of text data is generated as PCM data. When the PCM data is output for each frame (63 ms), the voltage of a battery power supply is detected and different ATT values (attenuation ratios) are set in accordance with threshold values (Level 1˜4) corresponding to the detected voltage. The lower the power supply voltage, the larger the attenuation ratios. The PCM data is attenuated by such an attenuation ratio to reduce a load to the battery power supply. Even though the battery power supply is exhausted to some extent, no power-down due to an instantaneous increase in power load occurs, with the result that a high-level part of a series of speech data items is output at an adequate volume level that makes a low-level part thereof easy to hear.

VoIP phones according to the present invention include a microphone, which may be internal or external, and allow the user to communicate unobtrusively, check voice mail and conduct other activities in an environment which can be noisy in general and extremely noisy sometimes. Speech recognition functionally may also be used to generate and send touch tone or DTMF tones such as in response to call trees or voice recognition functionality used by airlines, credit card companies, voice mail systems, and other applications. A system and method of audio processing which provides enhanced speech recognition is provided. Audio input is received at the microphone which is processed by adaptive noise cancellation to generate an enhanced audio signal. The operation of the speech recognition engine and the adaptive noise canceller may be advantageously controlled based on Voice Activity Detection (VAD).

The invention discloses a voice playing method. The method comprises the steps of determining whether a playing frequency of a voice message in a preset time segment exceeds a preset threshold or not when a first clicking operation of a user on the voice message is detected; if the playing frequency of the voice message in the preset time segment exceeds the preset threshold, determining target playing volume and a target playing speed, wherein the target playing volume is higher than playing volume of a currently played voice message, and the target playing speed is smaller than a playing speed of the currently played voice message; and playing the voice message according to the target playing volume and the target playing speed. An embodiment of the invention furthermore provides a terminal device. With the adoption of embodiments of the method and the terminal device, the listening efficiency of the voice message can be improved.

A headset device with active noise reduction which can switch to a hearing aid mode in which outside sound is picked up and directed into the ear or amplified to make it easy to hear comprises a housing that is mountable near or into a human ear, a speaker unit equipped within the housing and capable of emitting a sound signal, one or a plurality of microphone units for collecting ambient sound; and a signal processor electrically connected to the microphone unit(s), wherein the signal processor selectively operates, either in a hearing aid mode in which ambient sound coming in from the outside through the microphone unit(s) is emitted, or in a noise reduction mode in which ambient sound coming in from the outside is inverted and the inverted ambient sound is emitted through the speaker unit to reduce that ambient sound.

Improvements in voice signals transmitted within communication systems are obtained by use of adaptive filters, front and rear microphones, noise cancelling systems and other means and methods. Disclosed embodiments include the use of directional microphones, primary inputs, secondary inputs, adaptive weight generators, canceller outputs to improve signal to noise ratios and other communication attributes.