Patent ID: 8433050

Claim:
A signal processing method, comprising: for each endpoint participating in a communication session, a processor, at a conference bridge, selecting a codec that a selected endpoint is enabled to use, wherein at least first second, and third endpoints are included in the communication session, wherein the first endpoint uses a first codec and a first sampling frequency, wherein the second endpoint uses a second codec and a second sampling frequency, wherein the third endpoint uses at least one of (a) the first codec and the first sampling frequency and (b) a third codec and a third sampling frequency, wherein the second sampling frequency is higher than the first sampling frequency, wherein the second sampling frequency is higher than the third sampling frequency, and wherein the second sampling frequency is the highest sampling frequency; the processor receiving a first signal from the first endpoint using the first codec; the processor decoding the first received signal; the processor up-sampling the first decoded-signal to create a first normalized signal having a normalized sampling frequency, wherein the normalized sampling frequency is equal to the second sampling frequency; the processor receiving a second signal from the second endpoint using the second codec; the processor decoding the second received signal, wherein the second received signal is a second normalized signal having the normalized sampling frequency; the processor receiving a third signal from the third endpoint using one of the first codec and the third codec; the processor decoding the third received signal; the processor up-sampling the third decoded signal to create a third normalized signal having the normalized sampling frequency; the processor summing the first, second, and third normalized signals; the processor forwarding, to the first endpoint, a first summed signal using the first codec that includes the second received signal and the third received signal, wherein the first summed signal has the first sampling frequency; the processor forwarding, to the second endpoint, a second summed signal using the second codec that includes the first received signal and the third received signal, wherein the second summed signal has the second sampling frequency; and the processor forwarding, to the third endpoint, a third summed signal using one of the first codec and the third codec that includes the first received signal and the second received signal, wherein the third summed signal has one of the first sampling frequency and the second sampling frequency.