August 3, 2005
Consonant-boosting Cellphones
Ever struggled to hear what's being said on the phone while you are in a noisy car or a rowdy pub? Someone at the Philips research labs in Eindhoven obviously has because the Dutch company is filing world patents on a new way of making speech more easily understood in noisy surroundings, reports New Scientist.
"In everyday speech the hissy consonants – like "s" and "sh" – are more important for intelligibility than the vowels – like "a", "e" and "i". But the vowels are usually louder than the consonants.
So if the overall level of speech is amplified to try to make it stand out from background noise, the vowels become much too loud, overload the ear and drown out the consonants. The words become even harder to understand.
The new technology from Philips continually – and very rapidly – increases the amplification as the background noise level rises, but treats the vowels and consonants differently. The weaker, higher frequencies that form the consonants are amplified by about twice as much as the louder, lower frequency vowels – making the words more intelligible.
The selective boost system can be built into cellphones, laptop PCs and TV sets, says the company."
Read the consonant-boosting patent here (pdf file).
Related: - New Computer Chip Poised to Combat Cell Phone Background Noise
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