An active sound barrier has at least one passive sound absorber at or near a boundary location. A microphone provides an output to a frequency division module, in which a plural of frequencies are filtered to provide outputs corresponding to frequency segments of the receiving transducer output at respective ones of the frequencies. An active driving circuit drives plural speakers or output transducers at respective ones of the frequencies, with at least a subset of the speakers or output transducers at or close to the barrier. The speakers or output transducers cooperate with the passive sound absorber to reduce noise across a wide frequency band as well as to effect an electrically switchable soft boundary.

An active duct noise control system and a method thereof are provided, including a duct, a noise source speaker, a microphone, a plurality of noise-cancelling speakers, and a plurality of controllers. Wherein, the noise source speaker generates the primary noise, and the microphone is disposed to receive the residual noise. The plurality of noise-cancelling speakers are disposed between the noise source speaker and the microphone and respectively generate noise-cancelling audio frequencies to offset the primary noise and reduce the residual noise. The plurality of controllers are respectively connected to the plurality of noise-cancelling speakers and the noise source speaker and calculate each of the noise-cancelling audio frequencies generated by each of the plurality of noise-cancelling speakers according to the multi-channel inverse filtering principle.

The present technology relates to a signal processing device and method, and a program that are capable of improving noise canceling performance.

A signal processing device includes: a noise detection unit that detects control area internal noise generated in a control area formed by a microphone array; and a control unit that controls update of a filter coefficient of an adaptive filter, used to generate a signal of an output sound output by a speaker array, on the basis of a detection result of the control area internal noise in order to reduce external noise to a noise canceling area formed by the speaker array. The present technology can be applied to a spatial noise control device.

An active noise reducing earphone includes a rigid cup-like shell having an inner surface and an outer surface is provided. The inner surface encompasses a cavity with an opening, and a microphone arrangement is configured to pick up sound with at least one steerable beam-like directivity characteristic, and to provide a first electrical signal that represents the picked-up sound. The earphone further includes an active noise control filter configured to provide, based on the first electrical signal, a second electrical signal, and a speaker disposed in the opening of the cavity and configured to generate sound from the second electrical signal. The active noise control filter has a transfer characteristic that is configured so that noise that travels through the shell from beyond the outer surface to beyond the inner surface is reduced by the sound generated by the speaker.

A system for generating and injecting acoustic interference signals to mitigate undesired acoustic noise over a target zone. M pickup sensors pick up acoustic noise signals from one or more noise sources in real time and generate M noise signals, M>1. A beam forming network includes M acoustic beam forming modules to process the M noise signals respectively and generate N acoustic interference signals. N acoustic injectors condition, amplify and inject the N acoustic interference signals over the target zone, N>1. Each of the M acoustic beam forming modules includes a 1-to-N distribution network to transform a respective one of the M noise signals into N signals, and N finite-impulse-response filters to perform amplitude and phase weighting on the respective N signals and generate N intermediate signals which are combined respectively with corresponding intermediate signals generated by remaining M1 acoustic beam forming modules to generate the N acoustic interference signals.

Aspects of the subject technology provide for generation of a self-voice signal by an electronic device that is operating in an active noise cancellation mode. In this way, during a phone call, a video conference, or while listening to audio content, a user of the electronic device may benefit from active cancellation of ambient noise while still being able to hear their own voice when they speak. In various implementations described herein, the concurrent self-voice and automatic noise cancellation features are facilitated by accelerometer-based control of sidetone and/or active noise cancellation operations.

The present disclosure provides a method and an apparatus for noise reduction, and a headset. The method of noise reduction includes: acquiring a first reference noise signal; acquiring an initial direction of desired speech in response to a trigger signal; acquiring a real-time direction of desired speech based on a real-time orientation of the headset and the initial direction of desired speech, the real-time orientation being obtained by orientation tracking for the headset; filtering out a desired speech signal from the first reference noise signal to acquire an undesired noise signal, the desired speech signal being extracted in the real-time direction of desired speech; and filtering the undesired noise signal to output an inverse noise signal for speaker playback. Thus, using the method of noise reduction, not only the undesired noise in the ambient noise can be cancelled, but also the desired speech signal can be retained.

A wind noise reduction system including a beamformer, a comparator, and a voice mixer is provided. The beamformer may be an MVDR beamformer, and generates a beamformed signal based on a first microphone signal and a second microphone signal. The comparator generates a comparison signal based on the beamformed signal and a wind microphone signal. The comparison signal may be further based on a beamformed energy level of the beamformed signal and a wind energy level of the wind microphone signal. The voice mixer generates an output voice signal based on the beamformed signal, the wind microphone signal, and the comparison signal. The wind noise reduction system may further include a wind microphone corresponding to the wind microphone signal. The wind microphone may be arranged on a portion of a wearable audio device configured to be seated in a concha of a wearer.

A hearing protection and situational awareness system includes a wearable device, speakers, one or more beamformers, a microphone array, and a computation unit. The system generates a three-dimensional (3D) binaural sound for enhanced situational awareness; provides hearing protection by active noise cancelation; provides hearing enhancement by automatic gain control; and performs background noise reduction and cancelation. The system performs automated sound detection, identification, and localization, with automated voice assistance, and facilitates clear two-way communications. Each beamformer(s) outputs a sound track associated with a sound captured by the microphone array in a direction(s) of an acoustic beam pattern(s). The computation unit combines filtered sound tracks generated using head-related transfer function (HRTF) filters into left and right sound channels to drive the speaker(s) in left and right hearing members of the wearable device, respectively, thereby generating a 3D binaural sound including cues of the sound source directions.

An active noise reducing earphone includes a rigid cup-like shell having an inner surface and an outer surface is provided. The inner surface encompasses a cavity with an opening, and a microphone arrangement is configured to pick up sound with at least one steerable beam-like directivity characteristic, and to provide a first electrical signal that represents the picked-up sound. The earphone further includes an active noise control filter configured to provide, based on the first electrical signal, a second electrical signal, and a speaker disposed in the opening of the cavity and configured to generate sound from the second electrical signal. The active noise control filter has a transfer characteristic that is configured so that noise that travels through the shell from beyond the outer surface to beyond the inner surface is reduced by the sound generated by the speaker.