An audio emission device and an audio capture device that may respectively emit and capture sound within a listening area is described. The audio emission device may produce one or more primary audio beams in the listening area. Each of the primary audio beams may be formed by weighting a set of modal beam patterns. Separate orthogonal test signals may be injected into each modal beam pattern. Based on these separate orthogonal test signals, the individual modal beam patterns may be extracted from a detected sound signal, produced by the audio capture device, such that the contribution from each of these modal patterns in the detected sound signal may be determined. Utilizing the contributions from each modal beam pattern in the detected sound signal, the spatial relationship (e.g., distance and/or orientation/angle) between the audio emission device and the audio capture device may be determined.

The aspects disclosed herein are related to providing a stereoscopic audio environment that is based on speaker position and/or orientation. Once the speaker (or groups of speakers) are identified by the above-described techniques, the audio signal uniquely delivered to each of the speakers may be customized to produce an optimal sound environment.

A minimum level for a stimulation signal used in room correction processing is determined by measuring background noise. The stimulation signal is repeated a number of times and resulting responses are recorded. The recording responses are averaged, and the average is subtracted from each recorded response to obtain the background noise present in each recorded response. A stimulation signal to background noise ratio is computed from the stimulation signal and background noise and compared to an SNR threshold to determine if the stimulation signal level is sufficient to support the room correction processing. The background noise may be AC hum introduced electronically into the response signal, acoustic noise introduced by AC ventilation systems or noise emitting devices (refrigerators, etc), and it may be structure-born noise introduced by shaking the microphone, e.g. a bus drives by, shaking the floor the microphone is standing on.

Methods and systems are provided for audio devices with enhanced directional operations. In a system that includes one or more audio output components, positioning information associated with at least a part of a user's body maybe determined, the positioning information including at least orientation related information. The one or more audio output components may be controlled based on the determined positioning information, with the determined positioning information corresponding to a positional nature of the user within a three-dimensional space around the user, and where the controlling includes providing a three-dimensional audio environment according to the user.

Aspects of a multi-orientation playback device including at least one microphone array are discussed. A method may include determining an orientation of the playback device which includes at least one microphone array and determining at least one microphone training response for the playback device from a plurality of microphone training responses based on the orientation of the playback device. The at least one microphone array can detect a sound input, and the location information of a source of the sound input can be determined based on the at least one microphone training response and the detected sound input. Based on the location information of the source, the directional focus of the at least one microphone array can be adjusted, and the sound input can be captured based on the adjusted directional focus.

An audio processor for reproducing multichannel audio has a normal layer processing and a lower layer processing. The normal layer processing is configured for processing one or more channels of the object-specific audio or the multichannel audio belonging to a normal layer. The lower layer processing is configured for processing at least one channel or more channels of the object-specific audio or the multichannel audio belonging to a lower layer. The lower layer processing is configured to feed at least one signal belonging to the one channel or the more channels of the lower layer to a subwoofer output.

An after-market network module is provided for each speaker in a sound system that may have been vended without wireless capability. The module for each speaker receives signals from an audio source for play on the speaker. To assist in locating each speaker for purposes of effective audio set up and channel assignation without requiring undue user input, each network module may include a locator device that wirelessly communicates with a master node in the system.

Modular equipment includes a main module that has a main speaker, main communication components arranged to implement at least one wireless communication, power supply components arranged to acquire main power supply from the mains, main assembly means arranged to assemble the main module with one or more additional modules, a processor component arranged to detect if the main module is assembled with a first additional module comprising one or more microphones and, if this is the case, to activate at least one additional function implemented by the equipment and using the microphone(s).

A system and method for generating a virtual soundstage in a listening environment having a compact speaker array centrally positioned in a listening environment. A listener is sitting offset from the speaker array and the virtual soundstage is generated in front of a listener. A signal processing unit is configured to receive an incoming audio signal, to process left and right channel signals of the incoming audio signal to generate a null, and to steer the null toward one ear of a listener thereby generating a virtual sound source that is offset from the center of the listening environment. Virtual sound sources are generated in front of, to the left of, and to the right of the listener.

The technology described in this document can be embodied in a method that includes receiving, at a processing device, a feedback signal from a recording device, and generating, based on the feedback signal, a control signal for adjusting an acoustic output of a speaker device to achieve a target acoustic distribution within the environment. The feedback signal can indicate an acoustic characteristic of an environment in which a speaker device is located. The method also includes providing the control signal to the speaker device.