An audio encoder for encoding an audio signal having a lower frequency band and an upper frequency band includes: a detector for detecting a peak spectral region in the upper frequency band of the audio signal; a shaper for shaping the lower frequency band using shaping information for the lower band and for shaping the upper frequency band using at least a portion of the shaping information for the lower band, wherein the shaper is configured to additionally attenuate spectral values in the detected peak spectral region in the upper frequency band; and a quantizer and coder stage for quantizing a shaped lower frequency band and a shaped upper frequency band and for entropy coding quantized spectral values from the shaped lower frequency band and the shaped upper frequency band.

An audio encoder for encoding an audio signal having a lower frequency band and an upper frequency band includes: a detector for detecting a peak spectral region in the upper frequency band of the audio signal; a shaper for shaping the lower frequency band using shaping information for the lower band and for shaping the upper frequency band using at least a portion of the shaping information for the lower band, wherein the shaper is configured to additionally attenuate spectral values in the detected peak spectral region in the upper frequency band; and a quantizer and coder stage for quantizing a shaped lower frequency band and a shaped upper frequency band and for entropy coding quantized spectral values from the shaped lower frequency band and the shaped upper frequency band.

A method for rating the speech quality of a speech signal by a hearing device. An acousto-electric input transducer records sound containing the speech signal and converts it into an input audio signal. At least one articulatory and/or prosodic property of the speech signal is quantitatively acquired through analysis of the input audio signal, and a quantitative measure of speech quality is derived based on the articulatory and/or prosodic property. A hearing device with an acousto-electric input transducer configured to record a sound and convert it into an input audio signal, and a signal processing apparatus that is designed to quantitatively acquire at least one articulatory and/or prosodic property of a component, contained in the input audio signal, of a speech signal based on analysis of the input audio signal and to derive a quantitative measure of the speech quality based on the at least one articulatory and/or prosodic property.

An audio encoder for encoding an audio signal having a lower frequency band and an upper frequency band includes: a detector for detecting a peak spectral region in the upper frequency band of the audio signal; a shaper for shaping the lower frequency band using shaping information for the lower band and for shaping the upper frequency band using at least a portion of the shaping information for the lower band, wherein the shaper is configured to additionally attenuate spectral values in the detected peak spectral region in the upper frequency band; and a quantizer and coder stage for quantizing a shaped lower frequency band and a shaped upper frequency band and for entropy coding quantized spectral values from the shaped lower frequency band and the shaped upper frequency band.

There is provided a system comprising a microphone, configured to receive an input speech from an individual, an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter to convert the input speech to digital form and generate a digitized speech, a memory storing an executable code and an age estimation database, a hardware processor executing the executable code to receive the digitized speech, identify a plurality of boundaries in the digitized speech delineating a plurality of phonemes in the digitized speech, extract a plurality of formant-based feature vectors from each phoneme in the digitized speech based on at least one of a formant position, a formant bandwidth, and a formant dispersion, compare the plurality of formant-based feature vectors with age determinant formant-based feature vectors of the age estimation database, determine the age of the individual when the comparison finds a match in the age estimation database, and communicate an age-appropriate response to the individual.

There is provided a system comprising a microphone, configured to receive an input speech from an individual, an analog-to-digital (A/D) converter to convert the input speech to digital form and generate a digitized speech, a memory storing an executable code and an age estimation database, a hardware processor executing the executable code to receive the digitized speech, identify a plurality of boundaries in the digitized speech delineating a plurality of phonemes in the digitized speech, extract a plurality of formant-based feature vectors from each phoneme in the digitized speech based on at least one of a formant position, a formant bandwidth, and a formant dispersion, compare the plurality of formant-based feature vectors with age determinant formant-based feature vectors of the age estimation database, determine the age of the individual when the comparison finds a match in the age estimation database, and communicate an age-appropriate response to the individual.

A toy musical instrument having a compact housing supporting an automated music composition and generation engine that is driven by icon-based musical experience descriptors and musical style descriptors, selected by a child or adult during a video scoring process.

A toy musical instrument having a compact housing supporting an automated music composition and generation engine that is driven by icon-based musical experience descriptors and musical style descriptors, selected by a child or adult during a video scoring process.

A weighting function determination method includes obtaining a line spectral frequency (LSF) coefficient or an immitance spectral frequency (ISF) coefficient from a linear predictive coding (LPC) coefficient of an input signal and determining a weighting function by combining a first weighting function based on spectral analysis information and a second weighting function based on position information of the LSF coefficient or the ISF coefficient.

A weighting function determination method includes obtaining a line spectral frequency (LSF) coefficient or an immitance spectral frequency (ISF) coefficient from a linear predictive coding (LPC) coefficient of an input signal and determining a weighting function by combining a first weighting function based on spectral analysis information and a second weighting function based on position information of the LSF coefficient or the ISF coefficient.