Patent ID: 8422694

Claim:
A source sound separator for separating a target sound and an interfering sound from each other, the interfering sound incoming from a direction different from a direction of the target sound incoming, said separator comprising: one or more circuits configured to implement: a first spectrum generator for using received first and second sound signals of respective first and second ones of a plurality of microphones arranged spaced apart from one another to subtract from a value for the first sound signal a value obtained by delaying the second sound signal by a first predetermined period of time in a time or frequency domain to thereby generate at least one first target sound predominant spectrum; a second spectrum generator for subtracting from a value for the second sound signal a value obtained by delaying the first sound signal by a second predetermined period of time in the said time or frequency domain to thereby generate at least one second target sound predominant spectrum; a third spectrum generator for using the received first and second sound signals to perform processing for linear combination for suppressing the target sound in said time or frequency domain to thereby generate at least one target sound suppressed spectrum which is to form a set with the first and second target sound predominant spectra; a phase generator for using received sound signals of ones of the plurality of microphones to add the received sound signals in the frequency domain to thereby generate a phase signal; and a target sound separator for using the first target sound predominant spectrum, the second target sound predominant spectrum, the target sound suppressed spectrum and the phase signal to separate the target sound and the interfering sound from each other.