System for processing an audio signal to enhance speech intelligibility
View Patent ↗An adaptive audio system can be implemented in a communication device. The adaptive audio system can enhance voice in an audio signal received by the communication device to increase intelligibility of the voice. The audio system can adapt the audio enhancement based at least in part on levels of environmental content, such as noise, that are received by the communication device. For higher levels of environmental content, for example, the audio system might apply the audio enhancement more aggressively. Additionally, the adaptive audio system can detect substantially periodic content in the environmental content. The adaptive audio system can further adapt the audio enhancement responsive to the environmental content.
1. A method of adjusting a voice intelligibility enhancement, the method comprising:
receiving a voice signal and an input signal comprising near-end environmental content;
calculating with one or more processors the near-end environmental content in the input signal;
adjusting with the one or more processors a level of a voice enhancement based at least partly on the near-end environmental content, wherein said adjusting comprises tracking the near-end environmental content when the near-end environmental content is above a threshold, and wherein the threshold is determined based at least partly on a user-adjustable noise sensitivity level; and
applying the voice enhancement to the voice signal to produce an enhanced voice signal, the voice enhancement configured to emphasize one or more formants of the voice signal.
2. The method of claim 1 , wherein said calculating comprises obtaining a magnitude of the near-end environmental content and smoothing the magnitude of the near-end environmental content.
3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising adjusting an overall gain of the enhanced voice signal based at least partly on the near-end environmental content and on an amount of energy in the voice signal.
4. The method of claim 3 , wherein said adjusting the overall gain comprises computing a gain level proportional to the near-end environmental content.
5. The method of claim 1 , further comprising mapping one or more samples of the enhanced voice signal to one or more values stored in a sum of sines table to reduce clipping in the enhanced voice signal.
6. A system for automatically adjusting a voice intelligibility enhancement applied to an audio signal, the system comprising:
an enhancement module configured to receive an input voice signal comprising formants and to apply an audio enhancement to the input voice signal to provide an enhanced voice signal, the audio enhancement configured to emphasize one or more of the formants in the input voice signal;
an enhancement controller comprising one or more processors, the enhancement controller configured to adjust an amount of the audio enhancement applied by the enhancement module based at least partly on an amount of detected environmental noise by at least tracking the environmental noise when the environmental noise is above a threshold, the threshold being determined based at least partly on a user-adjustable noise sensitivity level; and
an output gain controller configured to:
adjust an overall gain of the enhanced voice signal based at least partly on the amount of environmental noise and on the input voice signal, and
apply the overall gain to the enhanced voice signal to produce an amplified voice signal.
7. The system of claim 6 , wherein the enhancement controller is further configured to adjust the amount of the audio enhancement applied based at least partially on a ratio of the amount of environmental noise to a threshold level.
8. The system of claim 6 , wherein the enhancement module is further operative to emphasize the one or more formants by applying gains to frequency sub-bands of the input voice signal.
9. The system of claim 8 , wherein the enhancement controller is further configured to adjust the amount of the audio enhancement applied by at least applying additional gains to the frequency sub-bands of the input voice signal.
10. The system of claim 6 , wherein the output gain controller is further configured to adjust the overall gain by providing a gain level proportional to the amount of the environmental noise.
11. The system of claim 6 , wherein the output gain controller is further configured to adjust the overall gain in response to energy of the voice signal being below a threshold.
12. The system of claim 6 , further comprising a distortion control module operative to reduce clipping in the amplified voice signal.
13. Non-transitory physical computer storage having instructions stored thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to implement a method of adjusting a voice intelligibility enhancement, the method comprising:
receiving a voice signal from a remote phone and a noise signal from a near-end microphone;
calculating a value of the noise signal;
adjusting gains applied to formants of the voice signal based at least partly on the value of the noise signal, wherein said adjusting comprises tracking the noise signal when the noise signal is above a threshold, and wherein the threshold is determined based at least partly on a user-adjustable noise sensitivity level; and
applying the gains to the formants of the voice signal to produce an enhanced voice signal by emphasizing one or more formants of the voice signal.
14. The non-transitory physical computer storage of claim 13 , further comprising adjusting an overall gain of the voice signal based at least partly on an amount of energy of the voice signal.
15. The non-transitory physical computer storage of claim 14 , wherein the overall gain is adjusted in response to the energy of the voice signal being below a threshold.
16. A system for adjusting a sensitivity of a voice intelligibility enhancement, the system comprising:
a voice enhancement module configured to receive, with a receiving device, an input voice signal received by a receiving device from a remote device and to apply an audio enhancement to the input voice signal to emphasize one or more formants in the input voice signal;
an enhancement controller configured to adjust an amount of the audio enhancement applied by the voice enhancement module based at least partly on an amount of environmental noise present in the input voice signal; and
a noise sensitivity controller comprising one or more processors configured to adjust a sensitivity of the enhancement controller to the environmental noise based at least partly on a statistical analysis of at least one or both of a microphone input signal obtained from a microphone of the receiving device and a speaker input signal provided as an output signal of the voice enhancement module, the noise sensitivity controller comprising:
a correlator configured to compute an autocorrelation of one or both of the microphone input signal and the speaker input signal,
a variance module configured to estimate a variance of the autocorrelation, and
a sensitivity adjuster configured to adjust the sensitivity of the enhancement controller to the environmental noise based at least partly on the estimated variance.