Patents Examined by Sonia Gay
  • Patent number: 10178485
    Abstract: A method for detecting wrong positioning of an earphone, and an electronic device and storage medium therefor are provided. The electronic device includes a speaker positioned on surface of a housing; and at least one processor configured to determine a positioning state of an earphone detachably connectable to the electronic device based on a difference between a first audio signal received through at least one microphone positioned in a first body of the earphone and a second audio signal received through at least one microphone positioned in a second body of the earphone.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 9, 2017
    Date of Patent: January 8, 2019
    Assignee: Samsung Electronic Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Gun-Woo Lee, Jung-Yeol An, Jong-Mo Kum, Gang-Youl Kim, Byeong-Jun Kim, Jae-Hyun Kim, Nam-Il Lee, Jun-Soo Lee, Chul-Min Choi
  • Patent number: 10171926
    Abstract: The present technology relates to a sound processing apparatus and a sound processing system for enabling more stable localization of a sound image. A virtual speaker is assumed to exist on the lower side among the sides of a tetragon having its corners formed with four speakers surrounding a target sound image position on a spherical plane. Three-dimensional VBAP is performed with respect to the virtual speaker and the two speakers located at the upper right and the upper left, to calculate gains of the two speakers at the upper right and the upper left and the virtual speaker, the gains being to be used for fixing a sound image at the target sound image position. Further, two-dimensional VBAP is performed with respect to the lower right and lower left speakers, to calculate gains of the lower right and lower left speakers, the gains being to be used for fixing a sound image at the position of the virtual speaker.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 11, 2014
    Date of Patent: January 1, 2019
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventors: Yuki Yamamoto, Toru Chinen, Runyu Shi, Mitsuyuki Hatanaka
  • Patent number: 10158934
    Abstract: A system includes a plurality of earpiece sets, each of the earpiece sets comprising a left earpiece and a right earpiece and a smart case. The smart case includes a case housing, a plurality of receptacle sets disposed within the case housing, wherein the receptacle sets are configured to hold the plurality of earpiece sets, a processor disposed within the case housing, and a transceiver disposed within the housing and operatively connected to the processor.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 7, 2017
    Date of Patent: December 18, 2018
    Inventor: Peter Vincent Boesen
  • Patent number: 10158931
    Abstract: A microphone connector assembly comprises a receptacle and a sleeve. The receptacle includes a housing, a first cavity formed within the housing, a frame, a protrusion formed on the frame, and a first electrical block supported by the frame and positioned within the first cavity. The sleeve includes an outer shell, a second cavity formed within the outer shell, a keyway, and a second electrical block positioned within the second cavity. The sleeve is insertable into the receptacle such that the protrusion enters the keyway and the first and second electrical blocks engage one another.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 2, 2017
    Date of Patent: December 18, 2018
    Assignee: Shure Acquisition Holdings, Inc.
    Inventors: Christopher Meyer, Walter Harwood
  • Patent number: 10148824
    Abstract: A modified end user network access point includes a switching module and a controller to track usage of the end user network access point by wirelessly connected end user devices. The tracked usage information is transmitted from the end user network access point to a remotely coupled data center. The data center collects usage information from a plurality of different end user network access points. The collected usage information is in turn transmitted from the data center to a network carrier. The network carrier uses the received usage information to bill users for accessing the end user network access points and using any services provided by the end user network access points. An owner of each end user network access point is compensated by the network carrier each instance that an end user device utilizes the end user network access point to access the network carrier's communications network.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 15, 2016
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2018
    Assignee: Vasu Networks Corporation
    Inventor: Vasudevan Ganesan
  • Patent number: 10142733
    Abstract: A measuring unit obtains a head-related impulse response of a user based on a sound signal which is collected by a microphone worn on an ear of the user in a state where a predetermined sound as a measurement signal is outputted from a speaker. A feature amount extraction unit extracts a feature amount of a frequency characteristic corresponding to the head-related impulse response. A characteristic selection unit selects a head-related transfer function from a database, where head-related transfer functions of many people are respectively made in association with feature amounts of head-related transfer functions, based on the extracted feature amount.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 11, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2018
    Assignee: JVC KENWOOD CORPORATION
    Inventor: Yumi Fujii
  • Patent number: 10136209
    Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, an apparatus, and a system for supplying power to an active noise reduction headset The method for supplying power to an active noise reduction headset includes: receiving a signal of first voltage transmitted by the terminal; processing the signal of the first voltage to obtain a signal of second voltage, where the second voltage is less than the first voltage, and the signal of the second voltage is transmitted to a noise reduction chip of the active noise reduction headset, so that the noise reduction chip of the active noise reduction headset acquires the signal of the second voltage to implement a noise reduction function. The method, apparatus, and system for supplying power to an active noise reduction headset provided in the embodiments of the present invention are used to supply power to the active noise reduction headset.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 29, 2016
    Date of Patent: November 20, 2018
    Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Wei Su, Huogen Kuang, Yudi Zhou, Zhiqiang Zhang, Zhonghui Peng
  • Patent number: 10120934
    Abstract: A method includes receiving, from an audio streaming system, a probe audio sample and identifying sufficiently matching reference audio samples based on a first comparison of a first portion of the probe audio sample to reference audio samples. The method also includes, in response to determining that the sufficiently matching reference audio samples do not meet a predetermined score threshold, retaining the sufficiently matching reference audio samples, identifying additional matching reference audio samples based on a second comparison a second portion of the probe audio sample to the reference audio samples, and outputting at least one of the reference audio samples based on the first comparison and the second comparison.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 29, 2017
    Date of Patent: November 6, 2018
    Assignee: GOOGLE LLC
    Inventors: Dominik Roblek, Matthew Sharifi
  • Patent number: 10117017
    Abstract: There is provided a headphone including: a driver unit including a vibration plate; a housing configured to house the driver unit, to form an air-tightened front air chamber of which a part except for an opening for sound output is spatially blocked from the outside on a front side on which the vibration plate of the driver unit is provided, and to form a rear air chamber that has a predetermined capacity on a rear side that is the opposite side to the front side; and an acoustic tube provided in a partial region of a partition wall of the housing that constitutes the rear air chamber and configured to spatially connect the rear air chamber and the outside of the housing through a tube.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 4, 2017
    Date of Patent: October 30, 2018
    Assignee: SONY CORPORATION
    Inventors: Eiji Kuwahara, Takahiro Suzuki
  • Patent number: 10104477
    Abstract: To respond to an n-bit digital signal, a speaker (1) is provided that includes an sound pressure generator (10) including 2i?1 piezoelectric elements (51, 52, and 53) for an i-th bit, and a total of 2n?1 stacked piezoelectric elements (51, 52, and 53). Due to divided vibration of the piezoelectric elements (51, 52, and 53), the speaker (1) has low directionality. Planar electrodes (80, 81, 82, and 83), to which voltage is applied, are provided between the piezoelectric elements (51, 52, and 53). By this means, all the piezoelectric elements can be driven using similar voltages, and high sound quality can be obtained without a problem of unit-to-unit differences between voltage sources.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 23, 2016
    Date of Patent: October 16, 2018
    Assignee: DAI-ICHI SEIKO CO., LTD.
    Inventors: Kenji Ogata, Akihiko Hosaka, Yoshiyuki Watanabe
  • Patent number: 10097939
    Abstract: A first signal may be received indicative of audio to be played by a speaker. A second signal may be received which comprises (i) a voice input received by a microphone and (ii) at least a portion of the audio played by the speaker at a same time that the microphone receives the voice input. Based on the first signal, nonlinearities output by the speaker which played the audio may be determined. At least the nonlinearities from the second signal may be removed to output a third signal comprising substantially the voice input received at the microphone.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 21, 2017
    Date of Patent: October 9, 2018
    Assignee: SONOS, INC.
    Inventors: Timothy W. Sheen, Simon Jarvis, Romi Kadri, Yean-Nian Willy Chen
  • Patent number: 10094862
    Abstract: A sound processing device performs obtaining a first frequency spectrum that corresponds to a first sound signal and a second frequency spectrum that corresponds to a second sound signal, calculating a level difference between a level of each of frequency components in the first frequency spectrum and a level of each of frequency components in the second frequency spectrum, calculating a spread of a distribution of the level difference during a prescribed period for each of the frequency components, and determining a gain to be multiplied to the frequency component in the first frequency spectrum and a gain to be multiplied to the frequency component in the second frequency spectrum in accordance with the spread of the distribution of the level difference.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 10, 2017
    Date of Patent: October 9, 2018
    Assignee: FUJITSU LIMITED
    Inventors: Sayuri Nakayama, Taro Togawa, Takeshi Otani
  • Patent number: 10083701
    Abstract: Encoding and decoding devices for encoding the channels of an audio system having at least four channels are disclosed. The decoding device has a first stereo decoding component which subjects a first pair of input channels to a first stereo decoding, and a second stereo decoding component which subjects a second pair of input channels to a second stereo decoding. The results of the first and second stereo decoding components are crosswise coupled to a third and a fourth stereo decoding component which each performs stereo decoding on one channel resulting from the first stereo decoding component, and one channel resulting from the second stereo decoding component.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 11, 2017
    Date of Patent: September 25, 2018
    Assignee: Dolby International AB
    Inventors: Kristofer Kjoerling, Harald Mundt, Heiko Purnhagen
  • Patent number: 10075795
    Abstract: Disclosed is an apparatus and method for processing a multichannel audio signal. A multichannel audio signal processing method may include: generating an N-channel audio signal of N channels by down-mixing an M-channel audio signal of M channels; and generating a stereo audio signal by performing binaural rendering of the N-channel audio signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2014
    Date of Patent: September 11, 2018
    Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
    Inventors: Yong Ju Lee, Jeong Il Seo, Seung Kwon Beack, Kyeong Ok Kang, Jin Woong Kim, Jae Hyoun Yoo
  • Patent number: 10075787
    Abstract: A portable loudspeaker with an enclosure that defines an acoustic cavity in an interior of the enclosure, at least one passive radiator exposed to the acoustic cavity, and an electro-acoustic transducer arranged to radiate sound pressure into the acoustic cavity to acoustically energize the at least one passive radiator. A user-operable switch is located in the interior of the enclosure, and a compliant button that forms part of the enclosure and overlies and is spaced from the switch. A sound-deadening member is positioned in the space between the button and the switch. The sound-deadening member is arranged to inhibit sound pressure in the acoustic cavity from reaching the button.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 10, 2017
    Date of Patent: September 11, 2018
    Assignee: Bose Corporation
    Inventors: Jeremy Heaston, Seth Mann
  • Patent number: 10075800
    Abstract: A mixing console (300) for processing at least a first and a second source signal and for providing a mixed audio signal comprises an audio signal generator (100) for providing an audio signal (120) for a virtual listening position (202) within a space (200), in which an acoustic scene is recorded by at least a first microphone (204) at a first known position within the space (200) as the first source signal (210) and by at least a second microphone (206) at a second known position within the space (200) as the second source signal (212).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 21, 2014
    Date of Patent: September 11, 2018
    Assignee: Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
    Inventors: Christoph Sladeczek, Annika Neidhardt, Martina Böhme
  • Patent number: 10070210
    Abstract: A speaker assembly and integrated light, comprising: a speaker having at least one sound emitting element; and, at least one array of LEDs mounted on the speaker. In some arrangements, the speaker may be wirelessly connected to an audio source. The invention has many potential applications and is particularly suitable for recreational vehicles (sometimes referred to as RVs) and/or outdoor use.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 24, 2014
    Date of Patent: September 4, 2018
    Assignee: CAMEC PTY LTD
    Inventor: Les Battyanyi
  • Patent number: 10068586
    Abstract: A sound processing system, method and program product for estimating parameters from binaural audio data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 14, 2015
    Date of Patent: September 4, 2018
    Assignee: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
    Inventor: Jonas Braasch
  • Patent number: 10057808
    Abstract: The present disclosure provides methods, devices and computer program products for non-uniform quantization of parameters relating to parametric spatial coding of audio signals. The disclosure further relates to a method and apparatus for reconstructing an audio object in an audio decoding system taking the non-uniformly quantized parameters into account. According to the disclosure, such an approach renders it possible to reduce bit consumption without substantially reducing the quality of the reconstructed audio object.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 2, 2017
    Date of Patent: August 21, 2018
    Assignee: Dolby International AB
    Inventors: Heiko Purnhagen, Per Ekstrand
  • Patent number: 10057676
    Abstract: The present invention relates to an enigma system comprising wearable universal control (WUC), a hearable, and an electronic device associated with a data source. The WUC is activated using hand/finger movements and/or voice commands that signal the electronic device to select an item in the user's environment and perform predefined information searches in the database and transfer such information to said hearable. The WUC is configured to control any number of devices selected by a user without the need for hardware or software changes. The enigma system can monitor the user's environment and automatically provide selectable information about the user's environment allowing a user to better “decoded” his environment as well as provide warnings.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 27, 2017
    Date of Patent: August 21, 2018
    Inventor: Lloyd Douglas Manning