Adaptive Bit Allocation Patents (Class 704/229)
  • Patent number: 8510107
    Abstract: A detector for determining an audio data bit rate of a pre-compressed audio elementary stream (AES), in which the pre-compressed AES includes a plurality of preamble length fields is provided. The detector includes an analyzer module configured to determine one or more candidate audio data bit rates of the AES from the plurality of preamble length fields, a detector module configured to determine whether one or more of the candidate audio data bit rates are correct, and a selector module configured to select one of the one or more candidate audio data bit rates determined to be correct as the audio data bit rate of the pre-compressed AES.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 18, 2009
    Date of Patent: August 13, 2013
    Assignee: General Instrument Corporation
    Inventors: Robert S. Nemiroff, Jing Yang Chen, Siu-Wai Wu
  • Patent number: 8498876
    Abstract: The present invention proposes a new method for improving the performance of a real-valued filterbank based spectral envelope adjuster. By adaptively locking the gain values for adjacent channels dependent on the sign of the channels, as defined in the application, reduced aliasing is achieved. Furthermore, the grouping of the channels during gain-calculation, gives an improved energy estimate of the real valued subband signals in the filterbank.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 18, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 30, 2013
    Assignee: Dolby International AB
    Inventors: Kristofer Kjorling, Lars Villemoes
  • Publication number: 20130191121
    Abstract: A method for redundant frame coding by an electronic device is described. The method includes determining an adaptive codebook energy and a fixed codebook energy based on a frame. The method also includes coding a redundant version of the frame based on the adaptive codebook energy and the fixed codebook energy. The method further includes sending a subsequent frame.
    Type: Application
    Filed: January 17, 2013
    Publication date: July 25, 2013
    Applicant: Qualcomm Incorporated
    Inventor: Qualcomm Incorporated
  • Patent number: 8494843
    Abstract: An encoding apparatus and a decoding apparatus for reducing the quantization error of a G.711 codec and improving sound quality are provided. The encoding apparatus includes a G.711 encoder which generates a G.711 bitstream by encoding an input audio signal; an enhancement-layer encoder which chooses one of a static bit allocation method and a dynamic bit allocation method that can produce less quantization error based on the input audio signal and the G.711 bitstream, and outputs an enhancement-layer bitstream including encoded additional mantissa information obtained by using the chosen bit allocation method; and a multiplexer which multiplexes the G.711 bitstream and the enhancement-layer bitstream. Therefore, it is possible to reduce the quantization error of a G.711 codec and improve sound quality.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 17, 2009
    Date of Patent: July 23, 2013
    Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
    Inventors: Jong Mo Sung, Hyun Joo Bae, Byung Sun Lee
  • Patent number: 8489403
    Abstract: The APPARATUSES, METHODS AND SYSTEMS FOR SPARSE SINUSOIDAL AUDIO PROCESSING AND TRANSMISSION (hereinafter “SS-Audio”) provides a platform for encoding and decoding audio signals based on a sparse sinusoidal structure. In one embodiment, the SS-Audio encoder may encode received audio inputs based on its sparse representation in the frequency domain and transmit the encoded and quantized bit streams. In one embodiment, the SS-Audio decoder may decode received quantized bit streams based on sparse reconstruction and recover the original audio input by reconstructing the sinusoidal parameters in the frequency domain.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 25, 2010
    Date of Patent: July 16, 2013
    Assignee: Foundation For Research and Technology—Institute of Computer Science ‘FORTH-ICS’
    Inventors: Anthony Griffin, Athanasios Mouchtaris, Panagiotis Tsakalides
  • Patent number: 8489027
    Abstract: A method and apparatus for communicating a sound wave is provided. The apparatus includes: a sound wave converter converting a sound wave signal transmitted from a counter apparatus through the human body into an electrical signal when the sound wave is transmitted from the counter apparatus through the human body and converting an electrical signal on data to be output to the counter apparatus into a sound wave; a data processor receiving the converted electrical signal from the sound wave converter and transmitting an electrical signal on the data to be output to the sound wave converter when the data to be output exists; and a switch connected between the sound wave converter and the data processor, the switch transmitting the converted electrical signal to the data processor and transmitting the electrical signal on the data to be output to the sound wave converter. Accordingly, it is possible to efficiently transmit a signal with a low loss of sound wave signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 30, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 16, 2013
    Assignee: Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
    Inventors: Jung Hwan Hwang, Sung Weon Kang, Hyung Il Park, In Gi Lim, Tae Wook Kang, Kyung Soo Kim, Jung Bum Kim, Chang Hee Hyoung, Jin Kyung Kim, Sung Eun Kim, Duck Gun Park, Ki Hyuk Park, Jae Hoon Shim
  • Patent number: 8484021
    Abstract: Provided is an encoding/decoding apparatus and method of multi-channel signals. The encoding apparatus and method of multi-channel signals may encode phase information of the multi-channel signals using a quantization scheme and a lossless encoding scheme, and the decoding apparatus and method of multi-channel signals may decode the phase information using an inverse-quantization scheme and a lossless decoding scheme.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 2, 2012
    Date of Patent: July 9, 2013
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Jung-Hoe Kim, Eun Mi Oh
  • Patent number: 8478586
    Abstract: A coded code string from an input terminal 110 is demultiplexed by a demultiplexer circuit 101, normalization coefficient information in the code string is sent to a normalization coefficient information increasing/decreasing circuit 102, addition or subtraction of a positive value is performed, and level adjustment of a signal is performed. A normalization coefficient information cutoff amount calculating circuit 103 calculates the cutoff amount for a case where the subtraction amount of normalization coefficient information is larger than normalization coefficient information and normalization coefficient information after subtraction is cut off at the minimum possible value. A gain control function generation information modifying circuit 104 modifies gain control function generation information according to the cutoff amount.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 26, 2008
    Date of Patent: July 2, 2013
    Assignee: Sony Corporation
    Inventor: Hiroyuki Honma
  • Patent number: 8468026
    Abstract: Provided are, among other things, systems, methods and techniques for decoding an audio signal from a frame-based bit stream. At least one frame includes processing information pertaining to the frame and entropy-encoded quantization indexes representing audio data within the frame. The processing information includes: (i) code book indexes, and (ii) code book application information specifying ranges of entropy-encoded quantization indexes to which the code books are to be applied. The entropy-encoded quantization indexes are decoded by applying the identified code books to the corresponding ranges of entropy-encoded quantization indexes.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 7, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 18, 2013
    Assignee: Digital Rise Technology Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Yuli You
  • Patent number: 8457115
    Abstract: A method for concealing lost frame includes: using history signals before the lost frame that corresponds to a lost MDCT coefficient to generate a first synthesized signal when it is detected that the MDCT coefficient is lost; performing fast IMDCT for the first synthesized signal to obtain an IMDCT coefficient corresponding to a lost MDCT coefficient; and using the IMDCT coefficient corresponding to the lost MDCT coefficient and an IMDCT coefficient adjacent to the IMDCT coefficient corresponding to the lost MDCT coefficient to perform TDAC and obtain signals corresponding to the lost frame. An apparatus for concealing lost frame is also disclosed herein. The method and the apparatus for concealing lost frames in the embodiments of the present invention make full use of the received partial signals to recover high-quality voice signals and improve the QoS.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 27, 2010
    Date of Patent: June 4, 2013
    Assignee: Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Wuzhou Zhan, Dongqi Wang
  • Patent number: 8457957
    Abstract: An iterative rate-distortion optimization algorithm for MPEG I/II Layer-3 (MP3) encoding based on the method of Lagrangian multipliers. Generally, an iterative method is performed such that a global quantization step size is determined while scale factors are fixed, and thereafter the scale factors are determined while the global quantization step size is fixed. This is repeated until a calculated rate-distortion cost is within a predetermined threshold. The methods are demonstrated to be computationally efficient and the resulting bit stream is fully standard compatible.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 22, 2012
    Date of Patent: June 4, 2013
    Assignee: Research In Motion Limited
    Inventors: Guixing Wu, En-hui Yang
  • Patent number: 8457958
    Abstract: An audio encoder encodes side information into a compressed audio bitstream containing encoding parameters used by the encoder for one or more encoding techniques, such as a noise-mask-ratio curve used for rate control. A transcoder uses the encoder generated side information to transcode the audio from the original compressed bitstream having an initial bit-rate into a second bitstream having a new bit-rate. Because the side information is derived from the original audio, the transcoder is able to better maintain audio quality of the transcoding. The side information also allows the transcoder to re-encode from an intermediate decoding/encoding stage for faster and lower complexity transcoding.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 9, 2007
    Date of Patent: June 4, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Kazuhito Koishida, Sanjeev Mehrotra, Wei-Ge Chen
  • Patent number: 8452591
    Abstract: A device comprising an audio information processor to receive at least one audio stream encoded according to a first protocol by a remote network processing device, the audio stream having associated comfort noise information to indicate a level of background noise available for presentation during silence periods associated with the audio stream, the audio information processor to decode the received audio stream according to the first protocol and to encode the decoded audio stream according to a second protocol, and a background noise translator to convert the comfort noise information received with the audio stream into a format compatible with the second protocol.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 11, 2008
    Date of Patent: May 28, 2013
    Assignee: Cisco Technology, Inc.
    Inventors: Herbert Wildfeuer, Robert Simon
  • Patent number: 8447597
    Abstract: In an encoding process, a CPU transforms an audio signal from the real-time domain to the frequency domain, and transforms the signal into spectra consisting of MDCT coefficients. The CPU separates the audio signal into several frequency bands, and performs bit shifting in each band such that the MDCT coefficients can be expressed with pre-configured numbers of bits. The CPU re-quantizes the MDCT coefficients at a precision differing for each band, and transmits the values acquired thereby and shift bit numbers as encoded data. Meanwhile, in a decoding process, a CPU receives encoded data and inverse re-quantizes and inverse bit shifts the data, thereby restoring the MDCT coefficients. Furthermore, the CPU transforms the data from frequency domain to the real-time domain by using the inverse MDCT, and restores and outputs the audio signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 1, 2007
    Date of Patent: May 21, 2013
    Assignee: Casio Computer Co., Ltd.
    Inventor: Hiroyasu Ide
  • Patent number: 8447617
    Abstract: There is provided a method or a device for extending a bandwidth of a first band speech signal to generate a second band speech signal wider than the first band speech signal and including the first band speech signal. The method comprises receiving a segment of the first band speech signal having a low cut off frequency and a high cut off frequency; determining the high cut off frequency of the segment; determining whether the segment is voiced or unvoiced; if the segment is voiced, applying a first bandwidth extension function to the segment to generate a first bandwidth extension in high frequencies; if the segment is unvoiced, applying a second bandwidth extension function to the segment to generate a second bandwidth extension in the high frequencies; using the first bandwidth extension and the second bandwidth extension to extend the first band speech signal beyond the high cut off frequency.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2010
    Date of Patent: May 21, 2013
    Assignee: Mindspeed Technologies, Inc.
    Inventors: Norbert Rossello, Fabien Klein
  • Patent number: 8442819
    Abstract: Methods and apparatus are disclosed for controlling a buffer in a communication system, such as a digital audio broadcasting (DAB) communication system. A more consistent perceptual quality over time provides for a more pleasing auditory experience to a listener. The disclosed bit allocation process determines, for each frame, a distortion d[k] at which the frame is to be encoded. The distortion d[k] is determined to minimize (i) the probability for a buffer overflow, and (ii) the variation of perceived distortion over time. A buffer level is controlled by partitioning a signal into a sequence of successive frames; estimating a distortion rate for a number of frames; and selecting a distortion such that the variance of the buffer level is bounded by a specified value.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 13, 2006
    Date of Patent: May 14, 2013
    Assignee: Agere Systems LLC
    Inventor: Christof Faller
  • Patent number: 8442838
    Abstract: A hybrid audio encoding technique incorporates both ABR, or CBR, and VBR encoding modes. For each audio coding block, after a VBR quantization loop meets the NMR target, a second quantization loop might be called to adaptively control the final bitrate. That is, if the NMR-based quantization loop results in a bitrate that is not within a specified range, then a bitrate-based CBR or ABR quantization loop determines a final bitrate that is within the range and is adaptively determined based on the encoding difficulty of the audio data. Excessive bitrates from use of conventional VBR mode are eliminated, while still providing much more constant perceptual sound quality than use of conventional CBR mode can achieve.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 22, 2011
    Date of Patent: May 14, 2013
    Assignee: Apple Inc.
    Inventors: Shyh-Shiaw Kuo, Hong Kaura, William G. Stewart
  • Patent number: 8433565
    Abstract: An apparatus to compress a wide-band speech signal, the apparatus including a narrow-band speech compressor to compress a low-band speech signal of the wide-band speech signal and output the compressed low-band speech signal as a low-band speech packet; and a high-band speech compressor to compress a high-band speech signal of the wide-band speech signal using energy information of the low-band speech signal provided from the narrow-band speech compressor, and outputs the compressed high-band speech signal as a high-band speech packet.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 15, 2004
    Date of Patent: April 30, 2013
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Woo-suk Lee, Ho-chong Park, Chang-yong Son
  • Patent number: 8433582
    Abstract: A method (100) includes receiving (101) an input digital audio signal comprising a narrow-band signal. The input digital audio signal is processed (102) to generate a processed digital audio signal. A high-band energy level corresponding to the input digital audio signal is estimated (103) based on a transition-band of the processed digital audio signal within a predetermined upper frequency range of a narrow-band bandwidth. A high-band digital audio signal is generated (104) based on the high-band energy level and an estimated high-band spectrum corresponding to the high-band energy level.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 1, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 30, 2013
    Assignee: Motorola Mobility LLC
    Inventors: Tenkasi V. Ramabadran, Mark A. Jasiuk
  • Patent number: 8428942
    Abstract: At the time of encoding audio content, the finally required data rate for delivery to the customer may be unknown. A data format is disclosed that is optimized for serving as Intermediate Format for efficient and fast recoding, to obtain one or more standard complying lossy encoded data streams with flexible data rates. Encoding can be performed in two steps that are inter-coordinated for cooperating, but may be locally and/or temporally separate. Between the partial encoders encoding parameters and/or auxiliary data are transmitted in a separate parameter enhancement layer, which complements a lossy data stream and can be used by the second encoder or transcoder for fast and computationally efficient implementation of the second encoding step. An additional lossless enhancement layer allows lossless reconstruction.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 12, 2007
    Date of Patent: April 23, 2013
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Peter Jax, Oliver Wuebbolt, Johannes Boehm
  • Patent number: 8428941
    Abstract: In lossy based lossless coding a PCM audio signal passes through a lossy encoder to a lossy decoder. The lossy encoder provides a lossy bit stream. The difference signal between the PCM signal and the lossy decoder output is lossless encoded, providing an extension bit stream. The invention facilitates enhancing a lossy perceptual audio encoding/decoding by an extension that enables mathematically exact reproduction of the original waveform using enhanced de-correlation, and provides additional data for reconstructing at decoder site an intermediate-quality audio signal. The lossless extension can be used to extend the widely used mp3 encoding/decoding to lossless encoding/decoding and superior quality mp3 encoding/de-coding.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2007
    Date of Patent: April 23, 2013
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Johannes Boehm, Peter Jax, Florian Keiler, Oliver Wuebbolt, Sven Kordon
  • Patent number: 8428953
    Abstract: An audio decoding device of the present invention includes: a decoding unit decoding a stream to a spectrum coefficient, and outputting stream information when a frame included in the stream cannot be decoded; an orthogonal transformation unit transforming the spectrum coefficient to a time signal; a correction unit generating a correction time signal based on an output waveform within a reference section that is in a section that overlaps between an error frame section to which the stream information is outputted and an adjacent frame section and that is a section in the middle of the adjacent frame section, when the decoding unit outputs the stream information: and an output unit generating the output waveform by synthesizing the correction time signal and the time signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 20, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 23, 2013
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Kojiro Ono, Takeshi Norimatsu, Yoshiaki Takagi, Takashi Katayama
  • Patent number: 8423371
    Abstract: An encoder capable of reducing the degradation of the quality of the decoded signal in the case of band expansion in which the high band of the spectrum of an input signal is estimated from the low band. In this encoder, a first layer encoder encodes an input signal and generates first encoded information, a first layer decoder decodes the first encoded information and generates a first decoded signal, a characteristic judger analyzes the intensity of the harmonic structure of the input signal and generates harmonic characteristic information representing the analysis result, and a second layer encoder changes, on the basis of the harmonic characteristic information, the numbers of bits allocated to parameters included in second encoded information created by encoding the difference between the input signal and the first decoded signal before creating the second information.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: December 22, 2008
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2013
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Tomofumi Yamanashi, Masahiro Oshikiri
  • Patent number: 8423038
    Abstract: It is an object to provide a sequence allocating method that, while maintaining the number of Zadoff-Chu sequences to compose a sequence group, is configured to make it possible to reduce correlations between different sequential groups. This method comprises the steps of setting a standard sequence with a standard sequence length (Nb) and a standard sequence number (rb) in a step (ST101), setting a threshold value (Xth(m)) in accordance with an RB number (m) in a step (ST103), setting a sequence length (N) corresponding to RB number (m) in a step (ST104), judging whether |r/N?rb/Nb|=Xth(m) is satisfied in a step (ST106), including a plurality of Zadoff-Chu sequences with a sequence number (r) and a sequence length (N) in a sequence group (rb) in a step (ST107) if the judgment is positive, and allocating the sequence group (rb) to the same cell in a step (ST112).
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 3, 2012
    Date of Patent: April 16, 2013
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Takashi Iwai, Daichi Imamura, Tomofumi Takata, Yoshihiko Ogawa
  • Patent number: 8392182
    Abstract: A method of encoding one or more parent blocks of values, the number of values being the length of each block, the method comprising for each parent block: (a) determining a first sum of values in the parent block; (b) splitting the parent block into smaller subblocks; (c) for at least one of the subblocks, determining a second sum of the values in the subblock, selecting a likelihood table from the plurality of likelihood tables based on said first sum of values in the parent block and encoding the second sum using the likelihood table; (d) designating each subblock a parent block; (e) carrying out steps (a), (b), (c) and (d) until at least one parent block reaches a predetermined condition.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 7, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2013
    Assignee: Skype
    Inventor: Koen Bernard Vos
  • Patent number: 8392148
    Abstract: A characteristic thumbprint is extracted from a data signal, the thumbprint based on statistics relating to the data signal. The data signal can be compared indirectly by matching this thumbprint against one or more reference thumbprints. The data signal may be any type of signal, including streaming digitized audio or obtained from static files. A database may contain a number of these characteristic thumbprints, and the database can be searched for a particular thumbprint.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 3, 2012
    Date of Patent: March 5, 2013
    Assignee: Yahoo! Inc.
    Inventors: Jeffrey L. Caruso, Nicholas Seet, William Shawn Yeager
  • Patent number: 8386271
    Abstract: A scalable audio codec encodes an input audio signal as a base layer at a high compression ratio and one or more residual signals as an enhancement layer of a compressed bitstream, which permits a lossless or near lossless reconstruction of the input audio signal at decoding. The scalable audio codec uses perceptual transform coding to encode the base layer. The residual is calculated in a transform domain, which includes a frequency and possibly also multi-channel transform of the input audio. For lossless reconstruction, the frequency and multi-channel transforms are reversible.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 25, 2008
    Date of Patent: February 26, 2013
    Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
    Inventors: Kazuhito Koishida, Sanjeev Mehrotra, Radhika Jandhyala
  • Patent number: 8380523
    Abstract: The present invention includes receiving a plurality of frame data including first frame data and second frame data encoded by at least one coding schemes, obtaining first flag information indicating whether the first frame data and the second frame data are encoded by frequency domain transform coding scheme, respectively, decoding the first frame data by frequency domain transform coding scheme based on the first flag information when the first frame data is encoded by frequency domain transform coding scheme, obtaining second flag information indicating whether subframe data is encoded by time domain transform coding scheme or time-frequency domain coding scheme when the second frame data is not encoded by frequency domain transform coding scheme, the at least two subframe data being included in the second frame data, decoding the subframe data by time domain transform coding scheme or time-frequency domain transform coding scheme based on the second flag information, and compensating for discontinuity exi
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 7, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 19, 2013
    Assignee: LG Electronics Inc.
    Inventors: Dong Soo Kim, Sung Yong Yoon, Hyun Kook Lee, Jae Hyun Lim
  • Patent number: 8374858
    Abstract: An audio codec losslessly encodes audio data into a sequence of analysis windows in a scalable bitstream. This is suitably done by separating the audio data into MSB and LSB portions and encoding each with a different lossless algorithm. An authoring tool compares the buffered payload to an allowed payload for each window and selectively scales the losslessly encoded audio data, suitably the LSB portion, in the non-conforming windows to reduce the encoded payload, hence buffered payload. This approach satisfies the media bit rate and buffer capacity constraints without having to filter the original audio data, reencode or otherwise disrupt the lossless bitstream.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 9, 2010
    Date of Patent: February 12, 2013
    Assignee: DTS, Inc.
    Inventor: Zoran Fejzo
  • Patent number: 8374857
    Abstract: Perceptual audio coder refers to audio compression schemes that exploit the properties of human auditory perception. The coder allocates the quantization noise below the masking threshold such that even with the bit rate limitation, the noise is imperceptible to the ear. These distortion and bit rate requirement makes the bit allocation-quantization process a considerable computational effort. One method includes incrementally adjusting a global gain according to a gradient. The gradient could be adjusted each time the number of bits used to represent a quantized value is counted. Another method includes limiting a rate controlling parameter to a predetermined number of loops. The method could also include deriving a global gain to ensure exit from the loop. Accordingly, embodiments of the present disclosure provide a fast and efficient method to derive the rate controlling parameter and can be applied to generic perceptual audio encoders where low computational complexity is required.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 3, 2007
    Date of Patent: February 12, 2013
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics Asia Pacific Pte, Ltd.
    Inventors: Evelyn Kurniawati, Kim Hann Kuah, Sapna George
  • Patent number: 8374884
    Abstract: A coding apparatus reduces a circuit scale and the amount of coding processing calculation. A frequency domain conversion section performs a frequency analysis of the signal sampled at a sampling rate Fx with an analysis length of 2·Na and calculates first spectrum S1(k)(0?k<Na). A band extension section extends the effective frequency band of first spectrum S1(k) to 0?k<Nb so that a new spectrum can be assigned to the extended area following to the frequency k=Na of first spectrum S1(k). An extended spectrum assignment section assigns extended spectrum S1?(k)(Na?k<Nb) input to the extended frequency band from the outside. A spectral information specification section outputs information necessary to specify extended spectrum S1?(k) out of the spectrum given from the extended spectrum assignment section as a code.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: May 3, 2012
    Date of Patent: February 12, 2013
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventor: Masahiro Oshikiri
  • Patent number: 8374854
    Abstract: The present invention describes a speech enhancement method using microphone arrays and a new iterative technique for enhancing noisy speech signals under low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) environments. A first embodiment involves the processing of the observed noisy speech both in the spatial- and the temporal-domains to enhance the desired signal component speech and an iterative technique to compute the generalized eigenvectors of the multichannel data derived from the microphone array. The entire processing is done on the spatio-temporal correlation coefficient sequence of the observed data in order to avoid large matrix-vector multiplications. A further embodiment relates to a speech enhancement system that is composed of two stages. In the first stage, the noise component of the observed signal is whitened, and in the second stage a spatio-temporal power method is used to extract the most dominant speech component.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 27, 2009
    Date of Patent: February 12, 2013
    Assignee: Southern Methodist University
    Inventors: Scott C. Douglas, Malay Gupta
  • Patent number: 8370138
    Abstract: A scalable encoding device is capable of improving quality of a decoded signal without increasing an encoding amount and compensating data with a sufficient quality upon data loss. An extension layer bit distribution calculator calculates a bit distribution of a quality improving encoding data and compensation encoding data in the extension layer according to an audio mode of the input signal. An extension layer encoder generates quality improving encoding data according to the specified number of bits. A compensation information encoder extracts a part of core layer encoding data and makes it as compensation encoding data for the core layer. An extension layer encoded data generator multiplexes the extension layer bit distribution information, the compensation encoding data, and the quality improving encoding data so as to obtain extension layer encoding data.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: March 15, 2007
    Date of Patent: February 5, 2013
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Takuya Kawashima, Hiroyuki Ehara, Koji Yoshida
  • Patent number: 8364478
    Abstract: An audio signal processing apparatus, includes an environmental ambient noise level detection unit for detecting an environmental ambient noise level contained in an audio signal inputted through sound collection means for collecting a transmission sound at the time of a voice call, a signal level adjustment unit which has a level adjustment function to adjust an output signal level with respect to an input signal level, and an input/output characteristic change function to change an input/output characteristic when adjusting a level in the level adjustment function by means of a control signal, and in which a received sound signal in the case of the telephone call voice is arranged to be an input signal, and a control signal generation unit for generating the control signal for changing the input/output characteristic of the signal level adjustment unit from the environmental ambient noise level detected by the environmental ambient noise level detection unit.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 11, 2008
    Date of Patent: January 29, 2013
    Assignee: Sony Mobile Communicatins Japan, Inc.
    Inventor: Makoto Tachibana
  • Patent number: 8364495
    Abstract: An encoding device capable of realizing a scalable CODEC of a high performance. In this encoding device, an LPC analyzing unit (551) analyzes an input voice (301) efficiently with a synthesized LPC parameter obtained from a core decoder (305), to acquire an encoded LPC coefficient. An adaptive code note (552) is stored with its sound source codes, as acquired from the core decoder (305). The adaptive code note (552) and a stochastic code note (553) send sound source samples to a gain adjusting unit (554). This gain adjusting unit (554) multiplies the individual sound source samples by an amplification based on the gain parameters acquired from the core decoder (305), and then adds the products to acquire sound source vectors. These vectors are sent to an LPC synthesizing unit (555). This LPC synthesizing unit (555) filters the sound source vectors acquired at the gain adjusting unit (554), with the LPC parameter, to acquire a synthetic signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 1, 2005
    Date of Patent: January 29, 2013
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventor: Toshiyuki Morii
  • Patent number: 8364484
    Abstract: An input voice detect is detected after starting a voice input waiting state; the detected voice is recognized; an elapsed time from the start of the voice input waiting state is counted; an informative sound which urges a user to input the voice is outputted when the elapsed time reaches a preset output set time; and the output of the informative sound is stopped when the elapsed time at the time of inputting the voice is shorter than the output set timedetect.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 14, 2009
    Date of Patent: January 29, 2013
    Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba
    Inventors: Takehide Yano, Tadashi Amada, Kazunori Imoto, Koichi Yamamoto
  • Patent number: 8332217
    Abstract: Methods of spectral partitioning which may be implemented in an encoder are described. The methods comprise determining an estimate of bit requirements for each of a plurality of spectral sub-bands. These estimates are then used to group the sub-bands into two or more regions by minimizing a cost function. This cost function is based on the estimates of bit requirements for each sub-band and the estimates may include estimates of code bit requirements and/or additional code bit requirements for each sub-band. These estimates may be determined in many different ways and a number of methods are described.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 9, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 11, 2012
    Assignee: Cambridge Silicon Radio Limited
    Inventors: David Hargreaves, Esfandiar Zavarehei
  • Patent number: 8332216
    Abstract: A method for stereo audio perceptual encoding of an input signal includes masking threshold estimation and bit allocation. The masking threshold estimation and bit allocation are performed once every two encoding processes. Another method for stereo audio perceptual encoding of an input signal includes performing a time-to-frequency transformation, performing a quantization, performing a bitstream formatting to produce an output stream, and performing a psychoacoustics analysis. The psychoacoustics analysis includes masking threshold estimation on a first of every two successive frames of the input signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: August 22, 2006
    Date of Patent: December 11, 2012
    Assignee: STMicroelectronics Asia Pacific PTE., Ltd.
    Inventors: Evelyn Kurniawati, Sapna George
  • Patent number: 8326618
    Abstract: In lossy based lossless coding a PCM audio signal passes through a lossy encoder to a lossy decoder. The lossy encoder provides a lossy bit stream. The lossy decoder also provides side information that is used to control the coefficients of a prediction filter that de-correlates the difference signal between the PCM signal and the lossy decoder output. The de-correlated difference signal is lossless encoded, providing an extension bit stream. Instead of, or in addition to, de-correlating in the time domain, a de-correlation in the frequency domain using spectral whitening can be performed. The lossy encoded bit stream together with the lossless encoded extension bit stream form a lossless encoded bitstream. The invention facilitates enhancing a lossy perceptual audio encoding/decoding by an extension that enables mathematically exact reproduction of the original waveform, and provides additional data for reconstructing at decoder site an intermediate-quality audio signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: April 18, 2007
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2012
    Assignee: Thomson Licensing
    Inventors: Peter Jax, Florian Keiler, Oliver Wuebbolt, Sven Kordon, Johannes Boehm
  • Patent number: 8326619
    Abstract: Methods of encoding a signal using a perceptual model are described in which a signal to mask ratio parameter within the perceptual model is tuned. The signal to mask ratio parameter is tuned based on a function of the bitrate of the part of the signal which has already been encoded and the target bitrate for the encoding process. The tuned signal to 5 mask ratio parameter is used to compute a masking threshold for the signal which is then used to quantise the signal.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: September 9, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2012
    Assignee: Cambridge Silicon Radio Limited
    Inventors: Esfandiar Zavarehei, David Hargreaves
  • Patent number: 8326640
    Abstract: Aspects of a method and system for multi-band amplitude estimation and gain control in an audio CODEC are provided. In this regard, an audio signal may be filtered and delayed to generate one or more sub-band signals, a gain may be applied to each sub-band signal to generate one or more level adjusted sub-band signals, and the one or more level adjusted signals may be added to a delayed version of the audio signal. The gain applied to a particular one of the one or more sub-band signals may be controlled based on a detected amplitude of a summed signal derived by summing the particular one of the one or more sub-band signals and a corresponding one of the one or more level-adjusted sub-band signals.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: October 9, 2008
    Date of Patent: December 4, 2012
    Assignee: Broadcom Corporation
    Inventors: Hongwei Kong, Taiyi Cheng
  • Patent number: 8321230
    Abstract: Hierarchical coding of a source audio signal in the form of a data stream including a base level and at least two hierarchical enhancement levels, each of the levels being organized in successive frames. At least one frame of at least one enhancement level has a duration less than the duration of at least one frame of the base level. At least one indication representative of an order used for a set of enhancement level frames corresponding to the duration of at least one frame of the base level is inserted into the data stream.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 5, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 27, 2012
    Assignee: France Telecom
    Inventors: Pierrick Philippe, Patrice Collen, Christophe Veaux
  • Patent number: 8315863
    Abstract: A post filter and a decoder enabling improvement of the sound quality of a decoded signal even when the sound quality of the decoded signal is different from the bands are disclosed. A frequency converting section determines a decoded spectrum. A power spectrum computing section computes the power spectrum from the decoded spectrum. A correction band determining section determines the band in which the power spectrum is corrected according to layer information. A power spectrum correcting section corrects the power spectrum in the corrected band in such a way that the variation along the frequency axis is suppressed. An inverse converting section subjects the corrected power spectrum to inverse conversion to determine an autocorrelation function. An LPC analyzing section determines an LPC coefficient of the determined autocorrelation function.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 15, 2006
    Date of Patent: November 20, 2012
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventor: Masahiro Oshikiri
  • Patent number: 8315880
    Abstract: A module (402) for binary coding of a signal envelope, comprising coding module (502) for coding a variable length first mode. The coding module for coding the first mode incorporates an envelope saturation detector and said coding module (402) further includes a second coding module (503) for coding a second mode in parallel with the coding module (502) for coding the first mode and a mode selector (504) adapted to select one of the two coding modes as a function of a code length criterion and of the result from the envelope saturation detector.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 13, 2007
    Date of Patent: November 20, 2012
    Assignee: France Telecom
    Inventors: Balazs Kovesi, Stéphane Ragot
  • Patent number: 8311818
    Abstract: A transform coding apparatus includes an input scale factor calculating section that calculates an input scale factor having a predetermined number of scale factors associated with an input spectrum as an element, and a codebook that stores a plurality of scale factor candidates having a predetermined number of elements and outputs one scale factor candidate. The transform coding apparatus also includes an error calculating section that calculates an error on a per element basis, a weighted error calculating section that determines a weight on a per element basis and calculates a sum of products of the error and the weight to calculate a weighted error, and a searching section that searches for a scale factor candidate that minimizes the weighted error in the codebook.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2012
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2012
    Assignee: Panasonic Corporation
    Inventors: Masahiro Oshikiri, Tomofumi Yamanashi
  • Patent number: 8311815
    Abstract: A down sampler 13 down samples a digital signal in the sampling frequency thereof from 96 kHz to 48 kHz on a frame-by-frame basis. The converted signal is compression encoded and output as a main code Im. An up sampler 16 converts a partial signal corresponding to the main code Im to a signal having the original sampling frequency 96 kHz, for example. An error signal between the up sampled signal and an input digital signal is generated. An array converting and encoding unit 18 array converts bits of sample chains of the error signal, thereby outputting an error code Pe. On a decoding side, a high fidelity reproduced signal is obtained based on the main code Im and the error code Pe, or a reproduced signal is obtained based on the main code Im only.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: July 14, 2009
    Date of Patent: November 13, 2012
    Assignee: Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
    Inventors: Takehiro Moriya, Akio Jin, Kazunaga Ikeda, Takeshi Mori
  • Patent number: 8301441
    Abstract: A method of encoding one or more parent blocks of values, the number of values being the length of each block, the method comprising for each parent block: (a) determining a first sum of values in the parent block; (b) splitting the parent block into smaller subblocks; (c) for at least one of the subblocks, determining a second sum of the values in the subblock, selecting a likelihood table from the plurality of likelihood tables based on said first sum of values in the parent block and encoding the second sum using the likelihood table; (d) designating each subblock a parent block; (e) carrying out steps (a), (b), (c) and (d) until at least one parent block reaches a predetermined condition.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: June 5, 2009
    Date of Patent: October 30, 2012
    Assignee: Skype
    Inventor: Koen Bernard Vos
  • Patent number: 8296156
    Abstract: An encoding method and apparatus and a decoding method and apparatus are provided. The decoding method includes extracting a compatible down-mix signal optimized for a first multi-channel decoder from the input bitstream, converting the compatible down-mix signal to be optimized for a second multi-channel signal by performing a compatibility processing operation on the compatible down-mix signal, and generating a three-dimensional (3D) down-mix signal by performing a 3D rendering operation on the converted down-mix signal. Accordingly, it is possible to efficiently encode multi-channel signals with 3D effects and to adaptively restore and reproduce audio signals with optimum sound quality according to the characteristics of an audio reproduction environment.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 7, 2007
    Date of Patent: October 23, 2012
    Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc.
    Inventors: Yang Won Jung, Hee Suk Pang, Hyen O Oh, Dong Soo Kim, Jae Hyun Lim
  • Patent number: 8290770
    Abstract: Provided are a method and apparatus for sinusoidal audio coding, which employs a tracking method for further effective coding of sinusoids extracted in the process of a sinusoidal analysis of parametric coding. The sinusoidal audio coding method includes: extracting sinusoids of a current frame by performing a sinusoidal analysis on an input audio signal; with respect to each of the extracted sinusoids, setting a mode selected from a birth mode in which a sinusoid is newly generated irrespective of sinusoids of a previous frame, a continuation mode in which the sinusoid is only one sinusoid continued from one of the sinusoids of the previous frame, and a branch mode in which the sinusoid is one of a plurality of sinusoids continued from one of the sinusoids of the previous frame; and coding the extracted sinusoids according to the selected mode. Accordingly, a plurality of sinusoids that can be continued from one previous track component are set to the continuation mode or the branch mode.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: February 5, 2008
    Date of Patent: October 16, 2012
    Assignee: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
    Inventors: Nam-suk Lee, Geon-hyoung Lee, Jae-one Oh, Chul-woo Lee, Jong-hoon Jeong
  • Patent number: RE44126
    Abstract: Estimates of spectral magnitude and phase are obtained by an estimation process using spectral information from analysis filter banks such as the Modified Discrete Cosine Transform. The estimation process may be implemented by convolution-like operations with impulse responses. Portions of the impulse responses may be selected for use in the convolution-like operations to trade off between computational complexity and estimation accuracy. Mathematical derivations of analytical expressions for filter structures and impulse responses are disclosed.
    Type: Grant
    Filed: November 15, 2011
    Date of Patent: April 2, 2013
    Assignee: Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
    Inventors: Corey I. Cheng, Michael J. Smithers, David N. Lathrop