Patent ID: 7881460

Claim:
A method for determining whether to apply echo cancellation in a computer system, the computer system connected with a microphone and a loudspeaker, the method comprising: in advance of a real-time communication session: outputting a sample sound via the loudspeaker generated from a sample audio signal; capturing the sample sound via the microphone to produce a captured audio signal; determining that the captured audio signal originated with the sample sound outputted by the loudspeaker generated from the sample audio signal by comparing one or more characteristics of the captured audio signal with one or more corresponding characteristics of the sample audio signal; analyzing the captured audio signal and the sample audio signal to determine that the captured audio signal includes an echo effect associated with the sample audio signal; automatically configuring the computer system to enable an echo cancellation algorithm; computing one or more initialization parameters for the echo cancellation algorithm based on the analyzing, wherein the one or more initialization parameters are used for synchronizing variable sizes of sliding windows between the sample audio signal and the captured audio signal for the echo cancellation algorithm to cancel the echo effect in the captured audio signal, wherein the sizes of the sliding windows are parameterized based on at least one of a number of echoes, variation in delay, and reflection paths; and saving the one or more initialization parameters in a memory within the computer system.