Interleaving of information into compressed digital audio streams

• US 20070033052A1
• Filed: 10/12/2006
• Published: 02/08/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 04/16/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: North Star Innovations Inc. (Wi-LAN Inc.)
• Original Assignee: SigmaTel Incorporated (NXP Semiconductors NV)
• Inventors: Cowgill, Clayton
• Granted Patent: US 7,752,049 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/270.100
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/167 Audio streaming, i.e. formatting and decoding of an encoded audio signal representation into a data stream for transmission or storage purposes
• CPC Class Codes: Y10S 707/99933 Query processing, i.e. searching

Abstract

Disclosed is a digital audio device that includes a communications port to communicatively connect the device to a server. The device also includes a unique identifier to identify the device. The device also includes a controller to allow transfer of digital audio files from the server. The digital audio files contain interleaved data selected by the server based on the unique identifier. The device also includes a decoder to decode the interleaved data and a data store to store at least one of the digital audio files and the interleaved data.

Claims

1. A digital audio device, comprising:

a communications port to communicatively connect the device to a server;

a unique identifier to provide device identification;

a controller to allow transfer of digital audio files from the server, wherein the digital audio files contain interleaved data selected by the server based on the unique identifier;

a decoder to decode the interleaved data; and

a data store to store at least one of the digital audio files and the interleaved data.

2. The digital audio device of claim 1, wherein the data store stores the unique identifier.

3. The digital audio device of claim 1, further comprising a filter to remove at least one unwanted or unusable portion from the interleaved data.

4. The digital audio device of claim 1, wherein the interleaved data includes audio data.

5. The digital audio device of claim 1, further comprising a display.

6. The digital audio device of claim 5, wherein the display is a particular type of display and the decoder is adapted to convert the interleaved data to be displayed based on the type of display.

7. The digital audio device of claim 6, wherein the type of display includes a spectrum analyzer display device and wherein the interleaved data includes display data that represents an audio signal in a meter format.

8. A system to provide information associated with digital audio files, the system comprising:

a music content server adapted to communicate with a client device to receive a file identifier to identify a digital audio file to be downloaded to the client device and to receive a unique identifier associated with the client device; and

wherein the music content server is adapted to interleave non-audio information with the digital audio file to create a digital data stream and to transmit the digital data stream to the client device, the non-audio information including device-specific information selected based on the unique identifier.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the non-audio information includes advertising data.

10. The system of claim 8, wherein the non-audio information includes data related to recommended equalization settings related to the digital audio file.

11. The system of claim 8, wherein the method further comprises identifying the non-audio information upon receipt of the file identifier.

12. The system of claim 8, wherein the music content server is adapted to selectively alter the non-audio information based on the client device.

13. The system of claim 12, wherein the music content server is adapted to selectively remove display data from the non-audio information based on the client device.

14. The system of claim 8, wherein the digital audio file is a .WMA file, a .WAV file, or a MPEG-1 Audio Layer-3 (MP3) file.

15. The system of claim 8, wherein:

the music content server is adapted to determine, based on the device identifier, that a portion of the non-audio information will not be used by the client device; and

the music content server is adapted to not interleave the portion of the non-audio information with the digital audio file.

16. The system of claim 8, wherein the music content server is adapted to not interleave non-audio information with the digital audio file when data indicating that the non-audio information is unwanted is received from the client device.

17. The system of claim 8, wherein the client device comprises a personal computer, console digital audio player, a portable digital audio player, or any combination thereof.

18. The system of claim 8, wherein the music content server is a personal computing device or a laptop computing device.

20. The computer-readable medium of claim 17, further comprising instructions executable to filter the interleaved data.

19. A computer-readable medium tangibly embodying instructions executable to:

transmit a file identifier to a server to identify a digital audio file to be downloaded;

transmit a device identifier to the server;

receive the digital audio file, wherein non-audio information data interleaved with the digital audio file is also received, the non-audio information including device-specific information selected based on the device identifier;

decode the non-audio information data to provide non-audio information associated with the digital audio file to a user; and

store at least one of the digital audio files and the interleaved data.