Patent ID: 6973184

Claim:
A packet voice conferencing method comprising: receiving concurrently-captured first and second sound field signals, the first and second sound field signals representing a single sound field captured at two spatially-separated points within a sound field; digitally encoding a signal block to represent the first and second sound field signals as captured during a first time period; estimating the relative temporal delay between the first and second sound field signals within the approximate timeframe of the first time period; transmitting to a remote conferencing point, in packet format, both the encoded signal block and a stereo decoding parameter based on the estimated relative temporal delay; and wherein estimating the relative temporal delay further comprises calculating, for each of a plurality of relative time shifts, a first-to-second sound field signal cross-correlation coefficient, selecting the relative temporal delay to correspond to the relative time shift generating the largest cross-correlation coefficient, and tracking the beginning and ending of a talkspurt represented in the sound field signals, and limiting the variation of the estimated relative temporal delay during a talkspurt.