This intelligent automatic level control is another feature proposal for mobile and SW-based audio players, as well as communication devices and public places like airports, trams, trains, etc..
Problem examples: with recent music players people do need to set the volume much higher when traveling on a train, lowering the volume when the train stops at a station, raising it again when it starts to move, etc… People need to raise the ringer volume of their phones when taking the phone to the street, lower the ringer volume when going to the library, etc.. Imagine a phone with a ringer volume set to 90% and, that rings at a very high level just in a middle of a meeting..
The idea: to track the level of environmental noise and automatically ..
- raise or lower the sound volume in the mobile music player headphones based on the environmental noise..
- raise or lower the speaker volume of mobile phones during phone calls, when the user enters a noisy area (road crossing, etc)
- raise or lower the ringer volume…
- adjust loudspeaker volumes in trains, buses, airports individually for every loudspeaker, based on its environmental noise level
(how many times it did happen that you did not understand the announcement about a route change because of the noise in the train?)
Application fields:
- all CD, Mp3, etc mobile music players
- all mobile phones..
- all in-tram, in-train, airport, etc based loudspeaker installations
Possible features:
- simple automatic level control based on the environmental noise- parametric-equalizer-like control based on the features of the environmental noise (not necessarily all frequencies need to be boosted everytime..)
- learn-by listening feature: (you take the mp3 player with you, enter the train, activate the LBL feature, start a music to play, and you show the player how you would set the music level at different noise levels and train speeds. with this the system learns how much it needs to update the volume at different cases..)
Technology analogy:
- the automatic contract control of mobile phone displays, based on the environmental light conditions
Keywords:
- Automatic (level/volume/gain) control,
- Adaptive noise masking,
- parametric equalizer,
- environmental noise spectrum
