5,188,123

43.66.Vt HEARING PROTECTIVE EARPLUG HAVING ALTERNATIVE MODES OF INSERTION

Ross Gardner, Jr., assigner to Cabot Safety Corporation 23 February 1993 (Class 128/864); filed 9 January 1992

The patent shows an earplug made of a viscoelastic polymeric foam. A stem is embedded in the plug to facilitate insertion and removal. The

100

6 7

I0

device is shaped to allow direct push-in but the high recovery rate foam may be rolled down for easy insertion into the ear canal.--SFL

5,073,938

43.72.Ew PROCESS FOR VARYING SPEECH SPEED AND DEVICE FOR IMPLEMENTING SAID

PROCESS

Claude Galand, assignor to International Business Machines 17 December 1991 (Class 381/34); filed in European Patent Office

22 April 1987

This speech reproduction device allows the playback speed to be varied over a range of 2 to 1 faster or slower without requiring analysis or detection of frequency-related events in the signal. Designed primarily for use in a telephone system, where signal energy in the fundamental fre- quency range is minimal, the method relies on the detection of the phase and amplitude in narrow bands extracted by quadrature mirror filters. Samples are inserted or deleted in the band signals in a manner that preserves phase relationships when the band signals are recombined.-- DLR

5,001,758

43.72.Gy VOICE CODING PROCESS AND DEVICE FOR IMPLEMENTING SAID PROCESS

Claude Galand and Jean Menez, assignors to International Business Machines

19 March 1991 (Class 38!/36); filed in European Patent Office 30 April 1986

This linear prediction vocoder uses a variety of residual excitation (RELP) coding described in the patent as "voice excitation." The input

signal is divided into three bands; a low band below 100 Hz, a mid band up to 1000 Hz, and a high band up to 3400 Hz. The two highest bands are separately coded by their LPC spectra. The low band is transmitted, then modified at the receiver for use as an excitation source. The phase of the highest band is encoded as an in-band signal that is transmitted along with the low-band signals.--DLR

5,001,759

43.72.Gy METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SPEECH CODING

Akira Fukui, assignor to NEC Corporation 19 March 1991 (Class 381/38); filed in Japan 18 September 1986

This multi-pulse-excited vocoder uses a cross correlation between the weighted speech input and the linear prediction filter's weighted im- pulse response to identify peaks which correspond to the desired pulse positions. As each maximum is located in the cross-correlation signal and a pulse position is tallied, the signal is edited to eliminate the peak por- tion. The cycle is then repeated to find the next-highest peak until the desired number of pulses have been extracted.--DLR

5,038,377

43.72.Ja ROM CIRCUIT FOR REDUCING SOUND DATA

Yoshiro Kihara et al., assignors to Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha 6 August 1991 (Class 381/51); filed in Japan 23 December 1982

A ROM addressing scheme is described that facilitates the reuse of common sound segments in order to reduce the memory space required to store speech synthesis data. A second layer of address pointers is added, greatly increasing the flexibility of accessing various small speech frag- ments, maximizing the multiple use of such fragments wherever possible.--DLR

5,073,140

43.72.Ja TOY ACTION FIGURES AND SPEECH AND SOUND EFFECTS ACCESSORY THEREFOR

Steven Lebensfeld et aL, assignors to Steven Lebensfeld et aL 17 December 1991 (Class 446/297); filed 22 October 1990

The patent shows speech synthesis and sound effects generator cir- cuitry that is built into an accessory portion of a toy action figure such as a soldier or space man. The circuitry might be located, for instance, in a

detachable part such as a weapon or backpack. Separate buttons would activate either vocal phrases or sound effects. In an alternate version, sounds or voice might be activated by gravity or by møvements'--DLR

612 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 94, No. 1, July 1993 Review of Acoustical Patents 612

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