System and method for identifying and processing audio signals

• US 9,818,416 B1
• Filed: 04/19/2012
• Issued: 11/14/2017
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Deka Products Limited Partnership
• Original Assignee: Deka Products Limited Partnership
• Inventors: Kamen, Dean, Kane, Derek G.
• Primary Examiner(s): Chawan, Vijay B
• Application Number:
  US13/450,739
• Time in Patent Office: 2,035 Days
• Field of Search: 704254, 704258, 704271, 704278, 704221, 704265, 704268, 704267, 7042701, 704205, 704203, 704266, 434185, 434169, 434118
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/04 Segmentation; Word boundary detection
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/08 Speech classification or search
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 15/187 Phonemic context, e.g. pronunciation rules, phonotactical constraints or phoneme n-grams
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/02 using spectral analysis, e.g. transform vocoders or subband vocoders
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/003 Changing voice quality, e.g. pitch or formants
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/038 using band spreading techniques
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 3/4938 comprising a voice browser which renders and interprets, e.g. VoiceXML

Abstract

A method for phoneme identification. The method includes receiving an audio signal from a speaker, performing initial processing comprising filtering the audio signal to remove audio features, the initial processing resulting in a modified audio signal, transmitting the modified audio signal to a phoneme identification method and a phoneme replacement method to further process the modified audio signal, and transmitting the modified audio signal to a speaker. Also, a system for identifying and processing audio signals. The system includes at least one speaker, at least one microphone, and at least one processor, wherein the processor processes audio signals received using a method for phoneme replacement.

Claims

1. A method for phoneme identification comprising:

receiving an audio signal from a hearing aid speaker;

performing initial processing comprising filtering the audio signal to remove audio features, the initial processing resulting in a modified audio signal;

transmitting the modified audio signal to a phoneme identification method and a phoneme replacement method to further process the modified audio signal; and

transmitting the modified audio signal to the hearing aid speaker.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the phoneme identification method comprising analyzing the modified audio signal using a Hilbert-Huang transform method.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the phoneme identification method comprising identifying a time slot occupied by a phoneme and identifying the phoneme in the modified audio signal.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising transmitting the time slot and the identified phoneme to the phoneme replacement method.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein the phoneme replacement method comprising determining whether the identified phoneme in the audio stream is a replaceable phoneme and, if the identified phoneme in the audio stream is a replaceable phoneme, replacing the identified phoneme in the modified audio signal with a replacement signal.

6. The method of claim 5 wherein replacing the identified phoneme comprising receiving the replacement signal from a table and determining a way to smoothly incorporate this sound into the modified audio signal.

7. The method of claim 6, replacing the identified phoneme further comprising transmitting the modified audio signal to the hearing aid speaker.

8. The method of claim 1 wherein filtering comprising digitally filtering the extreme values of the audio signal.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the initial processing comprising:

processing the signal and finding the maxima and minima of the signal;

passing the maxima to a high-pass filter;

filtering the maxima using a high pass filter to produce a filtered signal;

sampling the filtered signal;

applying an interpolation function to the sampled filtered signal to find the values between the last point and the current point; and

determining the difference between the sampled filtered signal and the signal.