Patent ID: 7804965

Claim:
A microphone system including a main unit for controlling the entire system and microphone apparatuses, having cascade connections from the main unit assuming the main-unit side to be upstream and the opposite side to be downstream, for transmitting sound signals in sequence, the microphone apparatus comprising: communication control means for controlling down data transmitted from the main unit and up data transmitted to the main unit between the main unit or an upstream microphone apparatus and a downstream microphone apparatus if existent; sound input means for converting collected sound into a digital signal to output as a sound-input signal; echo cancellation means for eliminating an echo component mixed in the sound-input signal by using reference data to generate a sound signal; and sound-information generation means, if up data including sound information of the downstream microphone apparatus is obtained, for updating the sound information by adding the sound signal of said microphone apparatus to the sound information of the downstream microphone apparatus and upstream transmitting the up data including the updated sound information by the communication control means, wherein the microphone apparatus transmits the down data transmitted from the main unit to the down-most microphone apparatus in sequence in accordance with the cascade connection and transmits the up data from the down-most microphone apparatus to the main unit in reverse sequence, wherein when the communication control means obtains up data including number-of-units information indicating a quantity of microphone apparatuses connected downstream, the communication control means increases a value of the number-of-units information to update the up data and transmits the updated up data upstream, if said microphone apparatus is the down-most microphone apparatus, the communication control means transmits the up data having an initial value set in the number-of-units information upstream, and the main unit is configured to set the number-of-units information increased from the down-most microphone apparatus included in the obtained up data in the quantity of microphone apparatuses having cascade connections to the main unit.