A hearing device comprising a first earphone with a first driver unit and a second earphone comprising a second driver unit. The headset further comprises a first ambient microphone configured for converting ambient noise to an ambient input signal. A first electric circuitry is configured for receiving the first ambient input sound signal from the ambient microphone and in an ambient mode outputting a first ambient output sound signal of a certain level to the first driver unit. An activation circuit is configured to activate and deactivate the ambient mode for the hearing device. In the ambient mode, the ambient output sound signal is sent to the first driver unit and not the second driver unit.

An illustrative controller includes: a transmitter to drive the acoustic transducer to generate acoustic bursts; a receiver to sense a response of the acoustic transducer to echoes; and a processing circuit coupled to the transmitter and to the receiver, the processing circuit configured to convert said received response into output data by: correlating said response to a driving signal to obtain a correlation response; distinguishing peak areas from non-peak areas in said correlation response; deriving a noise level in a portion of said correlation response based on the non-peak areas within said portion; calculating a signal to noise ratio (SNR) for a peak signal within the portion as a ratio of a peak value for the peak signal to the noise level in said portion of said correlation response; and accepting the peak signal as an echo only if the SNR for said peak signal exceeds a predetermined threshold.

A wireless audio device is provided. The wireless audio device includes an audio receiving circuit, an audio output circuit, an acceleration sensor, a communication circuit, a processor, and a memory. The memory may store instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the wireless audio device to detect an utterance of a user of the wireless audio device by using the acceleration sensor, enter a dialog mode in which at least some of ambient sounds received by the audio receiving circuit are output through the audio output circuit, in response to detecting the utterance of the user, and end the dialog mode if no voice is detected for a specified time or longer by using the audio receiving circuit in the dialog mode.

Provided is a headphone device including a housing, an audio input unit that is arranged to be separated from the housing and collects audio to generate an audio signal, a holding unit that abuts on a cavum concha or an inner wall of an ear canal of a user and holds the audio input unit in a space closer to an eardrum side than a tragus, in a state of being worn by the user, a wired connection unit that connects the housing and the audio input unit in a wired manner, a signal processing unit that generates a noise cancellation signal for an external sound based on the audio signal generated by the audio input unit, and generates an output signal based on the generated noise cancellation signal, and an audio output unit that outputs audio based on the output signal.

Subject matter disclosed herein may relate to wearable electronic audio devices and may relate more particularly to enabling environmental audio passthrough amplification for wearable electronic audio devices responsive to detection of particular environmental audio events.

There is provided a mechanism that enables cooperation of a plurality of audio processing devices. An earphone device includes a sensor unit that detects an overlapping state of the earphone device and a headphone device and a wireless communication unit that wirelessly communicates with the headphone device which is worn to overlap an outer side of the earphone device worn by a user.

By performing both noise cancellation and echo cancellation, a high-quality main voice signal is generated. A voice input/output apparatus includes a noise acquirer that is arranged toward an outside of a body of a user and acquires external noise arriving from the outside of the user, a voice output unit that accepts an input of a voice signal and outputs a voice to an ear canal of the user, a main voice acquirer that acquires a mixed voice, in which the external noise, the output voice, and a main voice of the user transmitted from a vocal cord of the user through the ear canal are mixed, and outputs a mixed voice signal, a noise canceler that processes the mixed voice signal using a noise signal based on the external noise, and an echo canceler that processes the mixed voice signal using the voice signal.

A multi-microphone device that can perform acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) without an external reference signal. The device uses the audio data from one of its microphones as a reference for purposes of AEC and acoustic noise cancellation (ANC). The device determines filter coefficients for an adaptive filter for ANC when cancelling one microphone signal from another microphone's signal. Those filter coefficients are buffered and delayed and then used for AEC operations cancelling one microphone signal from another microphone's signal. When desired audio (such as a wakeword, speech, or the like) is detected, the device may freeze the coefficients for purposes of performing AEC until the desired audio is complete. The device may then continue adapting and using the coefficients.

A user content audio signal is converted into sound that is delivered into an ear canal of a wearer of an in-ear speaker, while the in-ear speaker is sealing off the ear canal against ambient sound leakage. An acoustic or venting valve in the in-ear speaker is automatically signaled to open, so that sound inside the ear canal is allowed to travel out into an ambient environment through the valve, while activating conversion of an ambient content audio signal into sound for delivery into the ear canal. Both user content and ambient content are heard by the wearer. The ambient content audio signal is digitally processed so that certain frequency components have been gain adjusted, based on an equalization profile, so as to compensate for some of the insertion loss that is due to the in-ear speaker blocking the ear canal. Other embodiments are also described and claimed.

An electronic device includes a communication module, and a processor. The processor is configured to identify context information. The processor is also configured to select a specific task corresponding to the context information from among predetermined inference tasks relating to processing of an audio signal The processor is further configured to select an external electronic device, which is to process the specific task, from among external electronic devices that are establishing a communication connection to the electronic device. Additionally, the processor is configured to assign processing of the specific task to the external electronic device.