This application discloses a method for reducing an occlusion effect of an earphone, and a related apparatus. The method is applied to an earphone having at least one microphone and a speaker. The method includes: detecting occurrence of at least one of the following events: a user speaks and the user is in a motion state; and triggering at least one of the following operations in response to the at least one event: processing the user's sound signal based on the at least one microphone to suppress an occlusion effect of the earphone, and playing an audio by using the speaker, to mask a sound signal in the user's auditory canal. Embodiments of this application can reduce or even eliminate the earphone occlusion effect, to improve user experience.

An apparatus and method of pre-conditioning audio for machine perception. Machine perception differs from human perception, and different processing parameters are used for machine perception applications (e.g., speech to text processing) as compared to those used for human perception applications (e.g., voice communications). These different parameters may result in pre-conditioned audio that is worsened for human perception yet improved for machine perception.

A User Equipment (UE) is operative to generate CN (Comfort Noise) control parameters, e.g., as part of audio-decoding processing by the UE. A buffer of a predetermined size implemented in the UE is configured to store CN parameters for SID (Silence Insertion Descriptor) frames and active hangover frames. Processing circuitry of the UE is configured to determine a CN parameter subset relevant for SID frames based on the age of the stored CN parameters and on residual energies, and use the determined CN parameter subset to determine CN control parameters for a first SID frame following an active signal frame.

A User Equipment (UE) is operative to generate CN (Comfort Noise) control parameters, e.g., as part of audio-decoding processing by the UE. A buffer of a predetermined size implemented in the UE is configured to store CN parameters for SID (Silence Insertion Descriptor) frames and active hangover frames. Processing circuitry of the UE is configured to determine a CN parameter subset relevant for SID frames based on the age of the stored CN parameters and on residual energies, and use the determined CN parameter subset to determine CN control parameters for a first SID frame following an active signal frame.

A signal generator for generating a multichannel signal, having: first and a second audio sources, generating first and second audio signals, respectively; a mixing noise source, generating a noise signal; a mixer, mixing the noise signal and the first audio signal to derive a first channel, and the noise signal and the second audio signal to derive a second channel.

An audio encoder includes: an activity detector, analyzing a multichannel signal to determine a frame to be an inactive frame; a noise parameter calculator, calculating first and second parametric noise data for first and second channels, respectively; a coherence calculator, calculating coherence data indicating coherence between the first and the second channel in the inactive frame; and an output interface, generating the encoded multichannel audio signal comprising encoded audio data for an active frame and, for the inactive frame, the first and second parametric noise data and the coherence data.

A signal generator for generating a multichannel signal, having: first and a second audio sources, generating first and second audio signals, respectively; a mixing noise source, generating a noise signal; a mixer, mixing the noise signal and the first audio signal to derive a first channel, and the noise signal and the second audio signal to derive a second channel.

An audio encoder includes: an activity detector, analyzing a multichannel signal to determine a frame to be an inactive frame; a noise parameter calculator, calculating first and second parametric noise data for first and second channels, respectively; a coherence calculator, calculating coherence data indicating coherence between the first and the second channel in the inactive frame; and an output interface, generating the encoded multichannel audio signal comprising encoded audio data for an active frame and, for the inactive frame, the first and second parametric noise data and the coherence data.

A high quality speech is reproduced with a small data amount in speech coding and decoding for performing compression coding and decoding of a speech signal to a digital signal. In speech coding method according to a code-excited linear prediction (CELP) speech coding, a noise level of a speech in a concerning coding period is evaluated by using a code or coding result of at least one of spectrum information, power information, and pitch information, and various excitation codebooks are used based on an evaluation result.

A high quality speech is reproduced with a small data amount in speech coding and decoding for performing compression coding and decoding of a speech signal to a digital signal. In speech coding method according to a code-excited linear prediction (CELP) speech coding, a noise level of a speech in a concerning coding period is evaluated by using a code or coding result of at least one of spectrum information, power information, and pitch information, and various excitation codebooks are used based on an evaluation result.

In a method for coding of information for enhancing a background noise representation, voice activity of an input speech signal is determined. A noisiness parameter is determined for an inactive speech signal, wherein the noisiness parameter is based on a ratio of prediction gains of two Linear Predictive Coder (LPC) prediction filters with different orders. The noisiness parameter is quantized, and the quantized noisiness parameter is encoded for transmission.

In accordance with an example embodiment of the present invention, disclosed is a method and an apparatus for voice activity detection (VAD). The VAD comprises creating a signal indicative of a primary VAD decision and determining hangover addition. The determination on hangover addition is made in dependence of a short term activity measure and/or a long term activity measure. A signal indicative of a final VAD decision is then created.