Data processing: speech signal processing, linguistics, language translation, and audio compression/decompression inventions 08/08

20080208563 - Apparatus and method for translating speech in source language into target language, and computer program product for executing the method: An associated-information storage unit stores a name of associated information and a display position in association with each other. An example storage unit stores a semantic class, an example in a source language, and an example in a target language in association with each other. A dictionary storage unit stores... Agent: Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP

20080208564 - Process for translating machine shorthand into text: A method for translating stenographic strokes includes the steps of receiving a series of stenographic strokes, creating a table of translations of one or more strokes within the series of strokes, sequentially assigning a score to each of the one or more strokes, determining at least one alternate translation to... Agent: Mayback & Hoffman, P.a.

20080208565 - Method for automatic translation from a first language to a second language and/or for processing functions in integrated-circuit processing units, and apparatus for performing the method: m

20080208566 - Automated word-form transformation and part of speech tag assignment: A method of creating a data structure for use with a morphological algorithm is discussed. The method includes creating a data structure having a plurality of paths. The data structure maps a plurality of words into a set of classes. The method further includes modifying the data structure to remove... Agent: Westman Champlin (microsoft Corporation)

20080208568 - System and method for providing context to an input method by tagging existing applications: An improved system and method for providing context information of executable code to an input method is provided. Advanced text input methods may be made aware of the type of text expected to be received as input so that input methods may achieve a higher accuracy in recognition of text... Agent: Workman Nydegger/microsoft

20080208569 - System for identifying word patterns in text: A system for identifying word patterns in text is conducted in real time and is highly suitable for network and Internet use. The system comprises a semantic network that may be compiled on a local computer or at a remote host and a software text analysis module for receiving the... Agent: Kunzler & Mckenzie

20080208567 - Web-based proofing and usage guidance: A system is disclosed for checking grammar and usage using a flexible portfolio of different mechanisms, and automatically providing a variety of different examples of standard usage, selected from analogous Web content. The system can be used for checking the grammar and usage in any application that involves natural language... Agent: Bryan F. Erickson Westman Champlin & Kelly

20080208570 - Methods and apparatus for blind separation of multichannel convolutive mixtures in the frequency domain: A method and apparatus performing blind source separation using frequency-domain normalized multichannel blind deconvolution. Multichannel mixed signals are frames of N samples including r consecutive blocks of M samples. The frames are separated using separating filters in frequency domain in an overlap-save manner by discrete Fourier transform (DFT). The separated... Agent: Oblon, Spivak, Mcclelland Maier & Neustadt, P.c.

20080208571 - Maximum-likelihood universal speech iconic coding-decoding system (musics): This application for patent describes an invention toward achieving potentially hundred- to thousand-fold enhancement in the efficiency of the utilization of frequency-bandwidth for digital transmission of speech. This invention is based on the observation that human speech can be assumed to be composed of a series of contiguous fundamental ‘phonic... Agent: Ashok K. Sinha Multi-consulting Services

20080208572 - High-frequency bandwidth extension in the time domain: A system extends the high-frequency spectrum of a narrow band audio signal in the time domain. The system extends the harmonics of vowels by introducing a non linearity in a narrow band signal. Extended consonants are generated by a random-noise generator. The system differentiates the vowels from the consonants by... Agent: Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione

20080208573 - Speech signal coding: The present invention relates to methods and apparatuses for speech signal encoding and decoding. In accordance with the invention, a discrete time speech signal is encoded by identifying a speech element in the speech signal. If the speech element is identified for the first time, the encoder (108) creates a... Agent: Bell, Boyd & Lloyd, LLP

20080208574 - Name synthesis: An automated method of providing a pronunciation of a word to a remote device is disclosed. The method includes receiving an input indicative of the word to be pronounced. The method further includes searching a database having a plurality of records. Each of the records has an indication of a... Agent: Westman Champlin (microsoft Corporation)

20080208575 - Split-band encoding and decoding of an audio signal: For enabling an improved reconstruction of a high frequency band of an audio signal in a split-band coding approach, a value representative of a background noise level in an audio signal that is to be encoded is determined. Further, a gain value for the higher frequency band is determined. Further,... Agent: Ware Fressola Van Der Sluys & Adolphson, LLP

20080208576 - Digital video reproducing apparatus: Character information recognition means (101) extracts, through a character recognition process, character information from a selection button included in an index image. Based on text data having been outputted from the character information recognition means (101), index dictionary creation means (102) creates an index dictionary usable for a speech recognition... Agent: Wenderoth, Lind & Ponack L.l.p.

20080208577 - Multi-stage speech recognition apparatus and method: Provided are a multi-stage speech recognition apparatus and method. The multi-stage speech recognition apparatus includes a first speech recognition unit performing initial speech recognition on a feature vector, which is extracted from an input speech signal, and generating a plurality of candidate words; and a second speech recognition unit rescoring... Agent: Staas & Halsey LLP

20080208578 - Robust speaker-dependent speech recognition system: The present invention provides a method of incorporating speaker-dependent expressions into a speaker-independent speech recognition system providing training data for a plurality of environmental conditions and for a plurality of speakers. The speakerdependent expression is transformed in a sequence of feature vectors and a mixture density of the set of... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080208579 - Session recording and playback with selective information masking: A computer-implemented method for session processing includes identifying a type of data item that is presented to a user by a computerized system. A session in which the user interacts with the computerized system is recorded. A data item of the identified type is automatically detected in the recorded session.... Agent: Abelman, Frayne & Schwab

20080208580 - Method and dialog system for user authentication: The invention relates to a method of authenticating a user (N). In a dialog between the user (N) to be authenticated and a dialog system (1; D), a plurality of security queries is performed by the dialog system (1; D). A security query is taken from one of a plurality... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080208581 - Model adaptation system and method for speaker recognition: A system and method for speaker recognition speaker modelling whereby prior speaker information is incorporated into the modelling process, utilising the maximum a posteriori (MAP) algorithm and extending it to contain prior Gaussian component correlation information. Firstly a background model (10) is estimated. Pooled acoustic reference data (11) relating to... Agent: Fenwick & West LLP

20080208582 - Methods for statistical analysis of speech: Computer-implemented methods and apparatus are provided to facilitate the recognition of the content of a body of speech data. In one embodiment, a method for analyzing verbal communication is provided, comprising acts of producing an electronic recording of a plurality of spoken words; processing the electronic recording to identify a... Agent: Wolf Greenfield & Sacks, P.c.

20080208583 - Method and apparatus for building asset based natural language call routing application with limited resources: A method of processing limited natural language data to automatically develop an optimal feature set, bypassing the standard Wizard of OZ (WOZ) approach is provided. The method provides for building natural language understanding models or for processing existing data from other domains, such as the Internet, for domain-specific adaptation through... Agent: Duke W. Yee

20080208584 - Pausing a voicexml dialog of a multimodal application: Pausing a VoiceXML dialog of a multimodal application, including generating by the multimodal application a pause event; responsive to the pause event, temporarily pausing the dialogue by the VoiceXML interpreter; generating by the multimodal application a resume event; and responsive to the resume event, resuming the dialog. Embodiments are implemented... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208586 - Enabling natural language understanding in an x+v page of a multimodal application: Enabling natural language understanding using an X+V page of a multimodal application implemented with a statistical language model (‘SLM’) grammar of the multimodal application in an automatic speech recognition (‘ASR’) engine, with the multimodal application operating in a multimodal browser on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of interaction including... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208585 - Ordering recognition results produced by an automatic speech recognition engine for a multimodal application: Ordering recognition results produced by an automatic speech recognition (‘ASR’) engine for a multimodal application implemented with a grammar of the multimodal application in the ASR engine, with the multimodal application operating in a multimodal browser on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of interaction including a voice mode and... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208593 - Altering behavior of a multimodal application based on location: Methods, apparatus, and products are disclosed for altering behavior of a multimodal application based on location. The multimodal application operates on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of user interaction with the multimodal application, including a voice mode and one or more non-voice modes. The voice mode of user interaction... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208592 - Configuring a speech engine for a multimodal application based on location: Methods, apparatus, and products are disclosed for configuring a speech engine for a multimodal application based on location. The multimodal application operates on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of user interaction with the multimodal application. The multimodal application is operatively coupled to a speech engine. Configuring a speech engine... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208590 - Disambiguating a speech recognition grammar in a multimodal application: Disambiguating a speech recognition grammar in a multimodal application, the multimodal application including voice activated hyperlinks, the voice activated hyperlinks voice enabled by a speech recognition grammar characterized by ambiguous terminal grammar elements, including maintaining by the multimodal browser a record of visibility of each voice activated hyperlink, the record... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208587 - Document session replay for multimodal applications: Methods, apparatus, and computer program products are described for document session replay for multimodal applications. including identifying, by a multimodal browser in dependence upon a log produced by a Form Interpretation Algorithm (‘FIA’) during a previous document session with a user, a speech prompt provided by a multimodal application in... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208594 - Effecting functions on a multimodal telephony device: Methods, apparatus, and computer program products are described for effecting functions on a multimodal telephony device, implemented with the multimodal application operating on a multimodal telephony device supporting multiple modes of interaction including a voice mode and one or more non-voice modes, the multimodal application operatively coupled to an automated... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208591 - Enabling global grammars for a particular multimodal application: Methods, apparatus, and computer program products are described for enabling global grammars for a particular multimodal application according to the present invention by loading a multimodal web page; determining whether the loaded multimodal web page is one of a plurality of multimodal web pages of the particular multimodal application. If... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208588 - Invoking tapered prompts in a multimodal application: Methods, apparatus, and computer program products are described for invoking tapered prompts in a multimodal application implemented with a multimodal browser and a multimodal application operating on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of user interaction with the multimodal application, the modes of user interaction including a voice mode and... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208589 - Presenting supplemental content for digital media using a multimodal application: Presenting supplemental content for digital media using a multimodal application, implemented with a grammar of the multimodal application in an automatic speech recognition (‘ASR’) engine, with the multimodal application operating on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of interaction including a voice mode and one or more non-voice modes, the... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080208595 - System and method for capturing steps of a procedure: The present invention relates to a system and method for capturing the steps of a procedure in a workplace or other environment to assist with operations, knowledge transfer or regulatory compliance and for other general purposes. The system and method enable a person to capture a procedure while actively carrying... Agent: Head, Johnson & Kachigian

20080208597 - Apparatus, method, and computer program product for processing input speech: An analyzing unit performs a morphological analysis of an input character string that is obtained by processing input speech. A generating unit divides the input character string in units of division previously decided, that is composed of one or plural morphemes, and generates partial character strings including part of components... Agent: Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP

20080208596 - Automated interpretation of clinical encounters with cultural cues: A method, system and a computer program product for an automated interpretation and translation are disclosed. An automated interpretation occurs by receiving language-based content from a user. The received language-based content is processed to interpret the received language-based content into a target language. Also, a presence of a cultural sensitivity... Agent: Fish & Richardson, Pc

20080208598 - Concealment signal generator, concealment signal generation method, and computer product: When there are missing voice-transmission-signals, a repetition-section calculating unit sets a plurality of repetition sections of different lengths that are determined to be similar to the voice-transmission-signals preceding the missing voice-transmission-signal, the repetition sections being determined with respect to stationary voice-transmission-signals stored in a normal signal storage unit, the stationary... Agent: Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP

20080208599 - Modifying a speech signal: Disclosed is a device and method for modifying acoustic characteristics of a speech signal. The method comprises decomposing the signal into a parametric portion and a non-parametric residue; estimating the temporal envelope of the residue; modifying acoustic characteristics of the parametric portion and of the residue in compliance with modification... Agent: Mckenna Long & Aldridge LLP

20080208600 - Apparatus for encoding and decoding audio signal and method thereof: A method and/or apparatus for encoding and/or decoding an audio signal is disclosed, in which a downmix gain is applied to a downmix signal in an encoding apparatus which, in turn, transmits, to a decoding apparatus, a bit stream containing information as to the applied downmix gain. The decoding apparatus... Agent: Birch Stewart Kolasch & Birch

20080208601 - Universal container for audio data: Storing audio data encoded in any of a plurality of different audio encoding formats is enabled by parametrically defining the underlying format in which the audio data is encoded, in audio format and packet table chunks. A flag can be used to manage storage of the size of the audio... Agent: Hickman Palermo Truong & Becker LLP/apple Inc.

20080201131 - Method and apparatus for automatically discovering features in free form heterogeneous data: Techniques are provided for automatically discovering one or more features in free form heterogeneous data. In one aspect of the invention, the techniques include obtaining free form heterogeneous data, wherein the data comprises one or more data items, applying a label to each data item, using the labeled data to... Agent: Ryan, Mason & Lewis, LLP

20080201132 - System and method for finding the most likely answer to a natural language question: Automated question answering is disclosed that relates to the selection of an answer to a question from a pool of potential answers which awe manually or automatically extracted from a large collection of textual documents. The a feature extraction component, a feature combination component, an answer selection component, and an... Agent: Ryan, Mason & Lewis, LLP

20080201130 - Text segmentation and label assignment with user interaction by means of topic specific language models and topic-specific label statistics: The invention relates to a method, a computer program product, a segmentation system and a user interface for structuring an unstructured text by making use of statistical models trained on annotated training data. The method performs text segmentation into text sections and assigns labels to text sections as section headings.... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080201134 - Computer-readable record medium in which named entity extraction program is recorded, named entity extraction method and named entity extraction apparatus: A named entity extraction apparatus includes an extraction result acquisition unit for acquiring a named entity extraction result obtained as a result of a named entity extraction process; and a lexicon information creation unit for creating lexicon information which is utilized as clues in extracting named entities from text data,... Agent: Greer, Burns & Crain

20080201133 - System and method for semantic categorization: There is disclosed a system and method for automatically performing semantic categorization. In one embodiment at least one text description pertaining to a category set is accepted along with words that are anticipated to be uttered by a user pertaining to that category set; lexical chaining confidence score is attached... Agent: Fulbright & Jaworski L.l.p

20080201136 - Apparatus and method for speech recognition: A speech recognition apparatus includes a first storing unit configured to store a first acoustic model invariable regardless of speaker and environment, a second storing unit configured to store a classification model that has shared parameters and non-shared parameters with the first acoustic model to classify second acoustic models, a... Agent: Charles N. J. Ruggiero Ohlandt, Greeley, Ruggiero & Perle, L.L.P.

20080201135 - Spoken dialog system and method: A spoken dialog system stores a history of dialog states in a memory, outputs a system response in a current dialog state, inputs a user utterance, performs speech recognition of the user utterance, to obtain one or a plurality of recognition candidates of the user utterance and likelihoods thereof with... Agent: Charles N. J. Ruggiero Ohlandt, Greeley, Ruggiero & Perle, L.L.P.

20080201137 - Method of estimating noise levels in a communication system: A method of estimating noise in data containing voice information and noise includes receiving the data as a sequence of input values; transforming the data by applying a first non linear mapping to the input values wherein the derivative function of the mapping decreases in magnitude as the input values... Agent: Hamilton, Brook, Smith & Reynolds, P.C.

20080201138 - Headset for separation of speech signals in a noisy environment: A headset is constructed to generate an acoustically distinct speech signal in a noisy acoustic environment. The headset positions a pair of spaced-apart microphones near a user's mouth. The microphones each receive the user s speech, and also receive acoustic environmental noise. The microphone signals, which have both a noise... Agent: Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP

20080201140 - Automatic identification of sound recordings: Copies of original sound recordings are identified by extracting features from the copy, creating a vector of those features, and comparing that vector against a database of vectors. Identification can be performed for copies of sound recordings that have been subjected to compression and other manipulation such that they are... Agent: Schwegman, Lundberg & Woessner, P.A.

20080201139 - Generic framework for large-margin mce training in speech recognition: A method and apparatus for training an acoustic model are disclosed. A training corpus is accessed and converted into an initial acoustic model. Scores are calculated for a correct class and competitive classes, respectively, for each token given the initial acoustic model. Also, a sample-adaptive window bandwidth is calculated for... Agent: Westman Champlin (microsoft Corporation)

20080201141 - Speech filters: Utterances by a speaker are analyzed by an appropriate computational system. The spoken words are recognized and indexed to their respective analogs which are used to tailor the speech sequence to conform to a pre-determined standard of speech characteristics which could be fixed for a given language or chosen based... Agent: I. Abramov

20080201142 - Method and apparatus for automication creation of an interactive log based on real-time content: A system [100] includes an audio reception device [105] to receive audio from a person speaking and convert the audio to a text format. An intelligent agent [110] receives the text format and detects at least one key term in the text format based on predetermined criteria. A logic engine... Agent: Motorola, Inc.

20080201143 - System and method for multi-modal audio mining of telephone conversations: A system and method for the automated monitoring of inmate telephone calls as well as multi-modal search, retrieval and playback capabilities for said calls. A general term for such capabilities is multi-modal audio mining. The invention is designed to provide an efficient means for organizations such as correctional facilities to... Agent: Wiley Rein LLP

20080201144 - Method of emotion recognition: A method is disclosed in the present invention for recognizing emotion by setting different weights to at least of two kinds of unknown information, such as image and audio information, based on their recognition reliability respectively. The weights are determined by the distance between test data and hyperplane and the... Agent: Wpat, PC

20080201145 - Unsupervised labeling of sentence level accent: Methods are disclosed for automatic accent labeling without manually labeled data. The methods are designed to exploit accent distribution between function and content words.... Agent: Westman Champlin (microsoft Corporation)

20080201146 - Method, system and program product used in conjunction with voice recognition applications: A system, method and program product for the shortcomings of the prior art are overcome and additional advantages are provided through a system, method and program product for initializing a speech recognition application for a computer. The method comprises recording a variety of sounds associated with a specific text; identifying... Agent: International Business Machines Corporation

20080201147 - Distributed speech recognition system and method and terminal and server for distributed speech recognition: Provided are a distributed speech recognition system, a distributed speech recognition speech method, and a terminal and a server for distributed speech recognition. The distributed speech recognition system includes a terminal which decodes a feature vector that is extracted from an input speech signal into a sequence of phonemes and... Agent: Staas & Halsey LLP

20080201148 - System and method for generating and using an array of dynamic grammar: A system and method for generating dynamic grammars for use by a speech recognition system in response to signals from sensors indicative of the position and/or movement of a vehicle or platform, such as an aircraft or helicopter.... Agent: Brooks Kushman P.C.

20080201149 - Variable voice rate apparatus and variable voice rate method: A variable voice rate apparatus to control a reproduction rate of voice, includes a voice data generation unit configured to generate voice data from the voice, a text data generation unit configured to generate text data indicating a content of the voice data, a division information generation unit configured to... Agent: Oblon, Spivak, Mcclelland Maier & Neustadt, P.C.

20080201150 - Voice conversion apparatus and speech synthesis apparatus: A conversion rule and a rule selection parameter are stored. The conversion rule converts a spectral parameter of a source speaker to a spectral parameter of a target speaker. The rule selection parameter represents the spectral parameter of the source speaker. A first conversion rule of start timing and a... Agent: Amin, Turocy & Calvin, LLP

20080201151 - Information-processing device and information-processing method: An information-processing device and method that attains speech-recognition to recognize data input via speech. The information-processing device and method includes analyzing speech-recognition-grammar data, generating data on a template used to input data by speech based on the analysis results, and displaying the generated speech-input-template data.... Agent: Canon U.s.a. Inc. Intellectual Property Division

20080201152 - Apparatus for encoding and decoding audio signal and method thereof: A method and/or apparatus for encoding and/or decoding an audio signal is disclosed, in which a downmix gain is applied to a downmix signal in an encoding apparatus which, in turn, transmits, to a decoding apparatus, a bitstream containing information as to the applied downmix gain. The decoding apparatus recovers... Agent: Birch Stewart Kolasch & Birch

20080201153 - Generation of multi-channel audio signals: A decoder (115) generates a multi channel audio signal, such as a surround sound signal, from a received first signal. The multi-channel signal comprises a second set of audio channels and the first signal comprises a first set of audio channels. The decoder (115) comprises a receiver (401) which receives... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080195370 - System and method for synchronizing sound and manually transcribed text: A method for synchronizing sound data and text data, said text data being obtained by manual transcription of said sound data during playback of the latter The proposed method comprises the steps of repeatedly querying said sound data and said text data to obtain a current time position corresponding to... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080195371 - Apparatus and method to syncronously decode a stenographic input into two or more different language streaming text outputs: A method is disclosed to synchronously generate from a single stenographic input two or more streaming text outputs each comprising a different language. The method provides a stenographic data stream comprising a plurality of first language-based encoded words, and synchronously forms a first language streaming text output and a second... Agent: Dale F. Regelman

20080195373 - Digital sign language translator: A digital sign language translator system has a means for inputting words and phrases, a microprocessor for digitally translating the words and phrases into sign language, and a means for displaying the corresponding sign language.... Agent: Law Offices Of James E. Walton, Pllc

20080195372 - Machine translation feedback: Methods, program products and systems for first receiving an indication of when a user-manipulable cursor is positioned in proximity to a first presentation of first text in a graphical user interface (GUI), the first text being in a first language. In response to the first receiving, causing a second presentation... Agent: Fish & Richardson P.c.

20080195375 - Echo translator: t

20080195374 - Method and system for translation management of source language text phrases: A computer system for implementing a method for managing translations of text phrases is disclosed. The system stores text phrases in a source language as individual entries within a database. The system also stores any imported text phrases in a target language as individual entries within the database. For each... Agent: Ibm Corp. (rcr) C/o Rolnik & Associates, P.c.

20080195376 - Conceptual communication via real-time translation on portable electronic devices: Effective communication between people that speak different languages can be easily facilitated via a portable electronic device, such as a cell phone, that has a translation program and a set of words in both languages that are selected to convey a wide range of universal concepts. Users can scroll though... Agent: Mr. Jon V. Ramer

20080195377 - Method, device, and program product for verifying translation in resource file: The present invention provides a method for allowing users to easily know changes in PII character strings in a context at the time of execution of software. One aspect is a method for translation verification including the acts of: creating four text files, each corresponding to old and new versions... Agent: Ibm Corporation Rochester Ip Law Dept. 917

20080195378 - Question and answer data editing device, question and answer data editing method and question answer data editing program: The question and answer data editing device for editing dialogue content to generate question and answer data, includes a detecting unit that detects a part of the dialogue content similar to existing question and answer data stored, and a extracting unit that extracts a context in which the dialogue content... Agent: Sughrue Mion, Pllc

20080195379 - Style-checking method and apparatus for business writing: The method is software-based, and carried out on a computer system and cooperating apparatus. It checks written text for problems impairing clarity, conciseness and reader comfort in business documents. One embodiment includes routines for checking writing style in sentences and paragraphs, and for generating informational, critical and commendatory display indicators... Agent: Audrey A. Millemann Weintraub Genshlea Chediak

20080195380 - Voice recognition dictionary construction apparatus and computer readable medium: Disclosed is a voice recognition dictionary construction apparatus that includes a scanner unit to read a document; and a control unit to conduct character recognition of a term which is included in the document that has been read, and to update a dictionary for voice recognition in accordance with a... Agent: Buchanan, Ingersoll & Rooney Pc

20080195381 - Line spectrum pair density modeling for speech applications: Novel techniques for providing superior performance and sound quality in speech applications, such as speech synthesis, speech coding, and automatic speech recognition, are hereby disclosed. In one illustrative embodiment, a method includes modeling a speech signal with parameters comprising line spectrum pairs. Density parameters are provided based on the density... Agent: Westman Champlin (microsoft Corporation)

20080195382 - Spectral refinement system: An audio enhancement refines a short-time spectrum. The refinement may reduce overlap between audio sub-bands. The sub-bands are transformed into sub-band short-time spectra. A portion of the spectra are time-delayed. The sub-band short-time spectrum and the time-delayed portion are filtered to obtain a refined sub-band short-time spectrum. The refined spectrum... Agent: Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione

20080195383 - Embedded silence and background noise compression: There is provided a method for use by a speech encoder to encode an input speech signal. The method comprises receiving the input speech signal; determining whether the input speech signal includes an active speech signal or an inactive speech signal; low-pass filtering the inactive speech signal to generate a... Agent: Farjami & Farjami LLP

20080195384 - Method for high quality audio transcoding: A method and apparatus for a voice transcoder that converts a bitstream representing frames of data encoded according to a first voice compression standard to a bitstream representing frames of data according to a second voice compression standard using perceptual weighting that uses tuned weighting factors, such that the bitstream... Agent: Townsend And Townsend And Crew, LLP

20080195385 - Method and system for laughter detection: A method and apparatus for laughter detection. Laughter is detected through the presence of a sequence of at least a predetermined number such as three consecutive bursts, each burst comprising a voiced portion and an unvoiced portion. After detecting bursts, n-tuples such as triplets are detected, and a likelihood of... Agent: Soroker-agmon Advocate And Patent Attorneys

20080195386 - Method and a device for performing an automatic dubbing on a multimedia signal: A method and a device for performing an automatic dubbing on a multimedia signal This invention relates to a method and a system for performing automatic dubbing on a multimedia signal, such as a TV or a DVD signal, where the multimedia signal comprises information relating to video and speech... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080195387 - Method and apparatus for large population speaker identification in telephone interactions: A method and apparatus for determining whether a speaker uttering an utterance belongs to a predetermined set comprising known speakers, wherein a training utterance is available for each known speaker. The method and apparatus test whether features extracted from the tested utterance provide a score exceeding a threshold when matched... Agent: Soroker-agmon Advocate And Patent Attorneys Nolton House

20080195388 - Context based word prediction: Context-based word prediction is provided. A software application utilizes words contained in an application document to provide context-based word prediction in the same or a related document. The software application creates an application defined data source and populates the data source with words occurring in a document. When the same... Agent: Merchant & Gould (microsoft)

20080195389 - Text-dependent speaker verification: A text-dependent speaker verification technique that uses a generic speaker-independent speech recognizer for robust speaker verification, and uses the acoustical model of a speaker-independent speech recognizer as a background model. Instead of using a likelihood ratio test (LRT) at the utterance level (e.g., the sentence level), which is typical of... Agent: Microsoft Corporation C/o Lyon & Harr, LLP

20080195390 - Wireless voice muffled device for mobile communication: A wireless voice muffled device for cellular or mobile phones and voice recognition systems that substantially reduces vocal noise, extra portability and clear intelligible output, said device comprising: a microphone, a transceiver and sound absorbing means. The current invention has three adaptations: handheld, handheld foldable, hands-free and palm-held.... Agent: Irving Almagro

20080195391 - Hybrid speech synthesizer, method and use: Disclosed are novel embodiments of a speech synthesizer and speech synthesis method for generating human-like speech wherein a speech signal can be generated by concatenation from phonemes stored in a phoneme database. Wavelet transforms and interpolation between frames can be employed to effect smooth morphological fusion of adjacent phonemes in... Agent: Ip Patent Docketing Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis LLP

20080195392 - System for providing an acoustic signal with extended bandwidth: A bandwidth extension system extends the bandwidth of an acoustic signal. By shifting a portion of the signal by a frequency value, the system generates an upper bandwidth extension signal. An extended bandwidth acoustic signal may be generated from the acoustic signal, the upper bandwidth extension signal, and/or a lower... Agent: Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione

20080195393 - Dynamically defining a voicexml grammar in an x+v page of a multimodal application: Dynamically defining a VoiceXML grammar of a multimodal application, implemented with the multimodal application operating on a multimodal device supporting multiple modes of interaction including a voice mode and one or more non-voice modes, the multimodal application operatively coupled to a VoiceXML interpreter, and the method includes loading the X+V... Agent: International Corp (blf)

20080195394 - Device for communication for persons with speech and/or hearing handicap: A portable device enables a text to be constructed by an input interface, then to be sent on a voice synthesis engine. The synthesized voice is rendered audible through a loudspeaker. The synthesized voice can also be sent over a telephone network addressed to another telephone. The device thus enables... Agent: William H. Eilberg

20080195395 - System and method for telephonic voice and speech authentication: A telephonic authentication system, method and program product. An authentication system is provided for authenticating a user of a telephonic device that includes a setup system for capturing and storing an authentic user speech pattern sample; a comparison system that compares the authentic user speech pattern sample with an inputted... Agent: Hoffman Warnick Llc

20080195396 - System, method and computer program product for adding voice activation and voice control to a media player: A media player system, method and computer program product are provided. In use, an utterance is received. A command for a media player is then generated based on the utterance. Such command is utilized for providing wireless control of the media player.... Agent: Zilka-kotab, Pc

20080195398 - Audio encoding and decoding apparatus and method: Provided is an audio encoding and decoding apparatus and method for improving a compression ratio while maintaining sound quality when sinusoidal waves of an audio signal are connected and encoded. The audio encoding method includes connecting sinusoidal waves of an input audio signal, converting a frequency of each of the... Agent: Sughrue Mion, Pllc

20080195397 - Scalable multi-channel audio coding: An audio encoder adapted to encode a multi-channel audio signal, the encoder comprising an encoder combination module (ECM) for generating a dominant signal part (m) and a residual signal part (s) being a combined representation of first and second audio signals (x1, x2), the dominant and residual signal parts (m,... Agent: Philips Intellectual Property & Standards

20080195399 - Method for speed correction of audio recordings: The method adjusts the playback speed of an audio recording such that the pitch of the playback is substantially the same as the pitch at the time of the original recording. Assuming tuned instruments were used for the recording, the method alters the playback speed of the recording to bring... Agent: Ibm Corporation C/o Darcell Walker, Attorney At Law

20080189097 - Translation of text into numbers: A text string representing a number in a specific language is converted to a text string by tokenizing the string, distributing the tokens across a multi-level data structure to find possible distributions, and analyzing the combinations to find a valid distribution. The valid distribution may be interpreted to yield a... Agent: Microsoft Corporation

20080189096 - Translation process component: A translation tool that facilitates translation of a software product into multiple target human languages without requiring recompilation of any binary deliverables. The translation tool is installed by an end user who wishes to translate the software product into the target human language. The end user does not need any... Agent: Schneider Electric / Square D Company Legal Dept. - I.p. Group (np)

20080189098 - Language translator communicator (ltc): The Language Translator Communicator (LTC) will be incased in a 1.00×2.00×0.50 casing. Input voice will be received through the earpiece to the LTC and translated from input voice to input text mode. After the input text mode has been created the LTC will then translate from input text mode to... Agent: Peter Mravetz

20080189099 - Customizable delivery of audio information: A system for delivering customized audio content to customers. A central processing site (120) is coupled with content providers (110) through a network (142). The central processing consists of a number of components, namely content classification system (200), user preference management (400), content conversion system (500), content delivery system (600),... Agent: Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP

20080189100 - Method and system for improving speech quality: A method and system for improving speech quality may include estimating at least one component of a distorted portion of a speech signal from at least one component of an undistorted portion of the speech signal and reinforcing the component of the distorted portion based on the estimating. The components... Agent: Mcandrews Held & Malloy, Ltd

20080189101 - Method for adaptive codebook pitch-lag computation in audio transcoders: An apparatus for processing adaptive codebook pitch lag from one CELP based standard to another CELP based standard. The apparatus has various modules that perform at least the functionality described herein. The apparatus includes a time-base subframe checker inspection module, which is adapted to associate one or more incoming subframes... Agent: Townsend And Townsend And Crew, LLP

20080189102 - Device for recovering missing frequency components: A band recovering device recovers frequency components lying in a frequency band lost due to band-limitation of a sound signal. The device includes a peak-limiting amplifier for amplifying an input narrow-band signal while preventing the resulting amplified signal from exceeding a maximum amplitude. A peak-limitation detector detects the level of... Agent: Venable LLP

20080189104 - Adaptive noise suppression for digital speech signals: An apparatus for adaptively suppressing noise in an input signal frequency spectrum derived from overlapping input frames is provided. The system includes a psychoacoustic power computation module configured to compute a noisy signal power in psychoacoustic bands, a voice activity scoring module configured to compute a probabilistic score for a... Agent: Stmicroelectronics, Inc.

20080189103 - Signal distortion elimination apparatus, method, program, and recording medium having the program recorded thereon: Provided is a signal distortion elimination apparatus comprising: an inverse filter application means that outputs the signal obtained by applying an inverse filter to an observed signal as a restored signal when a predetermined iteration termination condition is met and outputs the signal obtained by applying the inverse filter to... Agent: Oblon, Spivak, Mcclelland Maier & Neustadt, P.C.

20080189105 - Apparatus and method for automatically indicating time in text file: In an apparatus and a method for automatically indicating time in a text file, a receiver module receives a text file and a speech file, in which the text file is composed of a plurality of sentences; a speech recognition module transforms the sentences in the text file into a... Agent: Apex Juris, PLLC

20080189106 - Multi-stage speech recognition system: A multi-stage speech recognition system includes an audio transducer that detects a speech signal, and a sampling circuit that converts the transducer output into a digital speech signal. A spectral analysis circuit identifies a portion of the speech signal corresponding to a first class and a second class. The system... Agent: Brinks Hofer Gilson & Lione

20080189107 - Estimating own-voice activity in a hearing-instrument system from direct-to-reverberant ratio: A method of identifying the user's own voice in a hearing instrument system and a hearing instrument system for performing such method is provided wherein a direct-to-reverberant ratio (DtoR) between the signal energy of a direct sound part (1a; 1b) and that of a reverberant sound part (2a, 3a; 2b,... Agent: Birch Stewart Kolasch & Birch

20080189108 - Text messaging in a telephony network: An apparatus including a capturer and a converter. The capturer is configured to capture at least one word spoken by a calling party of a phone call in accordance with a predetermined capturing policy. The converter is in communication with the capturer and configured to automatically convert at least one... Agent: Sughrue Mion, PLLC

20080189109 - Segmentation posterior based boundary point determination: Boundary points for speech in an audio signal are determined based on posterior probabilities for the boundary points given a set of possible segmentations of the audio signal. The boundary point posterior probability is determined based on a set of level posterior probabilities that each provide the probability of a... Agent: Westman Champlin (microsoft Corporation)

20080189110 - System and method for selecting and presenting advertisements based on natural language processing of voice-based input: A system and method for selecting and presenting advertisements based on natural language processing of voice-based inputs is provided. A user utterance may be received at an input device, and a conversational, natural language processor may identify a request from the utterance. At least one advertisement may be selected and... Agent: Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, LLP

20080189111 - Selective enablement of speech recognition grammars: A method for processing speech audio in a network connected client device can include selecting a speech grammar for use in a speech recognition system in the network connected client device; characterizing the selected speech grammar; and, based on the characterization, determining whether to process the speech grammar locally in... Agent: Akerman Senterfitt

20080189112 - Component information and auxiliary information related to information management: In one aspect, a method related to receiving, retrieving and presenting information. In addition, other method, system, and program product aspects are described in the claims, drawings, and/or text forming a part of the present disclosure.... Agent: Searete LLC Clarence T. Tegreene

20080189113 - Robust voice browser system and voice activated device controller: The present invention relates to a system for acquiring information from sources on a network, such as the Internet. A voice browsing system maintains a database containing a list of information sources, such as web sites, connected to a network. Each of the information sources is assigned a rank number... Agent: Foley & Lardner LLP

20080189114 - Method and apparatus for assisting vision impaired individuals with selecting items from a list: A method, system, and computer program product for assisting individuals with vision impairment in their selection of items that are typically displayed in a list.... Agent: Richard A. Henkler

20080189115 - Spatial sound generation for screen navigation: Methods and apparatus for spatial sound generation for screen navigation are disclosed. An example method for spatial sound generation comprises receiving an indication of a cursor focus position, where the cursor focus position corresponds with a location on a display device. The example method further includes receiving speech information associated... Agent: Brake Hughes Bellermann LLP

20080189118 - Audio encoding and decoding apparatus and method thereof: An audio encoding and decoding apparatus and a method thereof, capable of improving compression efficiency, by using coefficients that are stable over a period of time and in a range of frequency bands, are provided. The audio encoding method divides an input audio signal into frames having lengths different from... Agent: Sughrue Mion, PLLC

20080189117 - Method and apparatus for decoding parametric-encoded audio signal: A method and apparatus for decoding a parametric-encoded audio signal are provided. According to the present invention, parameters extracted from a bitstream of a parametric encoded audio signal are adjusted by a user and component signals are synthesized based on the adjusted parameters to be displayed to a user so... Agent: Sughrue Mion, PLLC

20080189116 - Method and system for dual mode subband acoustic echo canceller with integrated noise suppression: Certain aspects of a method and system for a dual mode subband acoustic echo canceller with integrated noise suppression may include splitting an input signal into a lowband component and a highband component. The subbands of each of the lowband component and the highband component may be processed in order... Agent: Mcandrews Held & Malloy, Ltd

20080189119 - Method of implementing equalizer in audio signal decoder and apparatus therefor: A method of implementing an equalizer in an audio signal decoder and an apparatus therefor are provided. According to the method and apparatus, a signal output from an audio signal decoder is not processed by an equalizer, but the values of frequency components are adjusted according to a user's input... Agent: Sughrue Mion, PLLC

20080189120 - Method and apparatus for parametric encoding and parametric decoding: A method of and apparatus for parametric encoding and parametric decoding are provided. According to the method and apparatus, not all parameters for all component signals are generated and according to a time interval, parameters for some component signals are replaced by index information allowing similar previous time intervals to... Agent: Sughrue Mion, PLLC