ANR with adaptive gain

Abstract

An ANR circuit, possibly of a personal ANR device, monitors a sound level of environmental sounds detected by a microphone external to an earpiece in which the ANR circuit is providing feedback-based ANR, and increases or decreases the degree of feedback-based ANR provided in response to the external microphone detecting a higher or lower sound level, respectively. Increasing and decreasing the degree of feedback-based ANR provided may be carried out by changing a variable loop gain of the ANR circuit and/or a range of frequencies of environmental sounds attenuated by the feedback-based ANR. An ANR circuit, possibly of a personal ANR device, reduces the degree of feedforward-based ANR that it provides in response to receiving an indication of the operation of a manually-operable control. The reduction of degree of feedforward-based ANR may be effected by turning off or otherwise deactivating the provision of feedforward-based ANR, reducing a range of frequencies of environmental noisesounds attenuated by the feedforward-based ANR to provide less attenuation of sounds detected by a feedforward microphone that are in a range of frequencies deemed to be those of human speech, and/orcreating a notch in the range of frequencies of environmental noise sounds attenuated by the feedforward-based ANR to provide less attenuation of sounds detected by the feedforward microphone that are in a range of frequencies deemed to be those of human speech.

Description

technical field [0001] The present disclosure relates to personal active noise reduction (ANR) devices for reducing acoustic noise near at least one of a user's ears. Background technique [0002] Headphones and other physical configurations of personal ANR devices worn around a user's ear for the purpose of acoustically isolating the user's ear from unwanted ambient noise have become commonplace. In particular, ANR headphones, in which the unwanted ambient noise sounds are counteracted by the active generation of anti-noise sounds, have become very popular, even when compared to only passive noise reduction in which the user's ears are simply physically isolated from the ambient noise ( The same goes for headphones or earbuds with PNR) technology. Of particular interest to users is the ability to also incorporate audio listening functionality so that the user can listen to electronically provided audio (e.g., playback of recorded audio or audio received from another device...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

[0003] Unfortunately, despite various improvements over time, existing personal ANR devices continue to suffer from several shortcomings

Foremost among these disadvantages are an undesirably high power consumption rate which in turn leads to short battery life, an undesirably narrow audible frequency range in which ANR is used to counteract undesired ambient noise sounds, an The situation of unpleasant sounds for people, and the situation that actually produces more unwanted noise sounds than any can reduce the unwanted ambient sounds

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