Patent ID: 9654644
Date: 2017-05-16
CPC Classifications: G06F,H04M,H04S

Claim:
1. A conference controller configured to place an upstream audio signal associated with a conference participant and a sound signal within a 2D or 3D conference scene to be rendered to a listener, wherein the upstream audio signal comprises a speech signal of the conference participant, and wherein the conference controller is configured to set up a X-point conference scene with X different spatial talker locations within the conference scene, X being an integer, X>0; assign the upstream audio signal to one of the talker locations; place a sound signal at a spatial sound location within the X-point conference scene; wherein the sound signal relates to a system sound generated by the conference controller and comprises a notification, an announcement and/or music; perform a spectral analysis of the upstream audio signal and the sound signal, wherein the spectral analysis includes analyzing corresponding time slices of frequency content for the upstream audio signal and the sound signal in real time; and modify a spectral composition of the sound signal based on the spectral analysis, in order to reduce a spectral masking of the upstream audio signal due to the sound signal, wherein modifying the spectral composition of the sound signal involves, based on a spectral composition of the upstream audio signal, emphasizing spectral bands of the sound signal that are likely to cause less conflict with the upstream audio signal and/or attenuating spectral bands of the sound signal that are likely to cause conflict with the upstream audio signal; and generate metadata identifying the assigned talker location and the spatial sound location and enabling an audio processing unit to generate a spatialized audio signal based on a set of downstream audio signals comprising the upstream audio signal and the sound signal; wherein when rendering the spatialized audio signal to the listener, the listener perceives the upstream audio signal as coming from the assigned talker location and the sound signal as coming from the sound location.