The present disclosure provides a microphone including at least one acoustoelectric transducer and an acoustic structure. The acoustoelectric transducer is configured to convert a sound signal to an electrical signal. The acoustic structure includes a sound guiding tube and an acoustic cavity. The acoustic cavity is in acoustic communication with the acoustoelectric transducer, and is in acoustic communication with outside of the microphone through the sound guiding tube. The acoustic structure has a first resonance frequency, the acoustoelectric transducer has a second resonance frequency, and an absolute value of a difference between the first resonance frequency and the second resonance frequency is not less than 100 Hz. By disposing different acoustic structures, resonance peaks in different frequency ranges may be added to the microphone, which improves a sensitivity of the microphone near multiple resonance peaks, thereby improving a sensitivity of the microphone in the entire wide frequency band.

An improved implantable auditory stimulation system includes two or more implanted microphones for transcutaneous detection of acoustic signals. Each of the implanted microphones provides an output signal. The microphone output signals may be combinatively utilized by an implanted processor to generate a signal for driving an implanted auditory stimulation device. The implanted microphones may be located at offset subcutaneous locations and/or may be provided with different design sensitivities, wherein combinative processing of the microphone output signals may yield an improved drive signal. In one embodiment, the microphone signal may be processed for beamforming and/or directionality purposes.

An electronic device includes one or more microphones that generate audio signals and a wind noise detection subsystem. The electronic device may also include a wind noise reduction subsystem. The wind noise detection subsystem applies multiple wind noise detection techniques to the set of audio signals to generate corresponding indications of whether wind noise is present. The wind noise detection subsystem determines whether wind noise is present based on the indications generated by each detection technique and generates an overall indication of whether wind noise is present. The wind noise reduction subsystem applies one or more wind noise reduction techniques to the audio signal if wind noise is detected. The wind noise detection and reduction techniques may work in multiple domains (e.g., the time, spatial, and frequency domains).

A method operates a hearing device which performs active noise suppression for suppressing noise signals having one or more frequency components. An audiogram is provided which specifies a hearing threshold of a user of the hearing device as a function of frequency, wherein by using the audiogram it is determined which frequency components of the noise are audible to the user and which are not audible. The noise suppression is operated selectively by suppressing audible frequency components of the noise and by not suppressing inaudible frequency components of the noise. A corresponding hearing device is operated according to the method.

A device for calculating loudspeaker signals for a plurality of loudspeakers while using a plurality of audio sources, an audio source including an audio signal, includes a forward transform stage for transforming each audio signal, block-by-block, to a spectral domain so as to obtain for each audio signal a plurality of temporally consecutive short-term spectra, a memory for storing a plurality of temporally consecutive short-term spectra for each audio signal, a memory access controller for accessing a specific short-term spectrum among the plurality of short-term spectra for a combination consisting of a loudspeaker and an audio signal on the basis of a delay value, a filter stage for filtering the specific short-term spectrum for the combination of the audio signal and the loudspeaker by using a filter provided for the combination of the audio signal and the loudspeaker, so that a filtered shot-term spectrum is obtained for each combination of an audio signal and a loudspeaker, a summing stage for summing up the filtered short-term spectra for a loudspeaker so as to obtain summed-up short-term spectra for each loudspeaker, and a backtransform stage for backtransforming, block-by-block, summed-up short-term spectra for the loudspeakers to a time domain so as to obtain the loudspeaker signals.

This disclosure describes techniques for detecting voice commands from a user of an ear-based device. The ear-based device may include an in-ear facing microphone to capture sound emitted in an ear of the user, and an exterior facing microphone to capture sound emitted in an exterior environment of the user. The in-ear microphone may generate an inner audio signal representing the sound emitted in the ear, and the exterior microphone may generate an outer audio signal representing sound from the exterior environment. The ear-based device may compute a ratio of a power of the inner audio signal to the outer audio signal and may compare this ratio to a threshold. If the ratio is larger than the threshold, the ear-based device may detect the voice of the user. Further, the ear-based device may set a value of the threshold based on a level of acoustic seal of the ear-based device.

In some embodiments, a method for processing an audio signal in an audio processing apparatus is disclosed. The method includes receiving an audio signal and a parameter, the parameter indicating a location of an auditory event boundary. An audio portion between consecutive auditory event boundaries constitutes an auditory event. The method further includes applying a modification to the audio signal based in part on an occurrence of the auditory event. The parameter may be generated by monitoring a characteristic of the audio signal and identifying a change in the characteristic.

A method for audio rendering by an apparatus comprising at least one audio rendering device, the method comprising: extracting (S10) a plurality of frequency band components from an input audio signal; determining (S15) from the device frequency response and the plurality of extracted frequency band components at least one indicator representative of masking frequencies energy, masking frequencies corresponding to frequency bands that are above a frequency threshold; determining at least one correction factor (S16) from the indicator representative of masking frequencies energy; e) for each frequency band, determining a second acoustic level threshold (S20) by modifying (S17) with the correction factor a predetermined first acoustic level threshold associated with said frequency band, and determining a reduction gain from a comparison (S30) between an acoustic level of the extracted frequency band and the second acoustic level threshold associated to said extracted frequency band, and applying (S40) the reduction gain.

The present disclosure discloses an acoustic output apparatus including at least one acoustic driver, a controller, and a supporting structure. The at least one acoustic driver may be configured to output sounds through at least two sound guiding holes. The at least two sound guiding holes may include a first sound guiding hole and a second sound guiding hole. The controller may be configured to control a phase and an amplitude of the sounds generated by the at least one acoustic driver using a control signal such that the sounds output by the at least one acoustic driver through the first and second sound guiding holes have opposite phases. The supporting structure may be provided with a baffle and configured to support the at least one acoustic driver such that the first and second sound guiding holes are located on both sides of the baffle.

Examples described herein involve configuring a playback device based on distortion, such as that caused by a barrier. One implementation may involve causing the playback device to play audio content according to an existing playback configuration, determining an existing frequency response of the playback device in a given system, and determining whether a difference between the existing frequency response of the playback device in the given system and a predetermined frequency response for the playback device is greater than a predetermined distortion threshold. If it is determined that the difference between the existing frequency response of the playback device and the predetermined frequency response for the playback device is greater than the predetermined distortion threshold, then the existing playback configuration of the playback device is changed to an updated playback configuration of the playback device and the playback device plays audio content according to the updated playback configuration.