Audio Excerpt Playback for Hands-Free Track Selection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Users face difficulties in selecting desired audio tracks from large libraries on digital audio players due to the limitations of small display screens and the need to search through textual criteria, which can be tedious and inconvenient, especially in situations requiring hands-free operation.
Innovation Solution
A digital audio player system that allows users to select tracks by listening to audio excerpts of recognizable portions, such as choruses or melodies, which are sequentially played until the desired track is identified, enabling hands-free and intuitive track selection.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If users search for tracks using textual criteria on display screens, then track selection can be performed with visual information, but the process becomes long and tedious due to large library sizes and small screen constraints
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the visual/mechanical interaction of scrolling through text lists on a small screen with an auditory system. Audio excerpts are played sequentially through the audio output, allowing users to identify tracks by listening to recognizable portions (hooks, choruses, melodies) rather than visually searching through text, thereby resolving the contradiction between ease of operation and time consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent segments the audio tracks into short, recognizable excerpts (typically 5-15 seconds) that contain distinctive musical elements. Instead of presenting the entire track or a long text list, the system plays these segmented audio snippets in sequence, enabling rapid identification without requiring users to listen to full tracks or scroll through extensive text, thus reducing selection time while maintaining ease of use.
2Quantity of substance
If the audio player stores hundreds or thousands of tracks, then the device provides extensive music library capacity, but users experience difficulty in identifying and selecting particular desired tracks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent substitutes visual search through text metadata with auditory recognition of musical content. Even with thousands of tracks stored, users can quickly identify the desired track by listening to audio excerpts containing recognizable musical patterns, hooks, or choruses, making track identification independent of library size and eliminating the difficulty of detecting the desired track among many options.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates and plays short audio copies (excerpts) of the full tracks stored in the library. These excerpts contain the essential recognizable portions of each track, allowing users to identify the full track from its audio fingerprint without having to search through text metadata or listen to the entire track, thus resolving the difficulty of identifying tracks in large libraries.
3Loss of information
If the display screen presents large amounts of track information, then users can see more track options, but the small screen size makes it impossible to display sufficient information for efficient searching
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the visual display channel with the auditory channel for presenting track information. Instead of attempting to display text information on a small screen, the system plays audio excerpts through the audio output, effectively transferring the information presentation from the limited visual domain to the unlimited auditory domain, thereby overcoming the screen area constraint while maintaining full information delivery.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions the information presentation from a two-dimensional visual display (constrained by screen area) to a temporal auditory dimension. Audio excerpts unfold over time, allowing complex musical information to be presented without spatial constraints, effectively adding a time dimension to information delivery and bypassing the limitations of small screen real estate.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods, devices, systems and data structures are provided for selecting an audio track on a digital audio player. A user of a digital media player is able to select a desired audio track by listening to excerpts of various tracks until the desired track is identified. One exemplary technique for selecting a desired audio track accessible by a media player, for example, begins by sequentially providing a number of audio excerpts to the user, with each audio excerpt corresponding to a recognizable portion of an audio track. When the user hears an excerpt of a desired track, an indication is provided and the media player plays the desired audio track. The excerpt may be of any duration and may incorporate any portion of the audio track that is likely to be recognizable by the user.