Patent ID: 8620388

Claim:
A noise suppressing device which receives sound signals through at least two sound-receiving units and suppresses noise components included in the input sound signals while a current using environment information is being taken, the noise suppressing device comprising: a detecting unit which detects a usage pattern of the noise suppressing device among a plurality of usage patterns in which positional relationships of the at least two sound-receiving units and/or positional relationships between the plurality of sound-receiving units and a target sound source are different from each other; a converting unit which converts using environment information used in a noise suppressing process to each of the sound signals received by the at least two sound-receiving units into using environment information in accordance with a usage pattern detected by the detecting unit both before and after usage patterns change; and a suppressing unit which performs the noise suppressing process using the using environment information converted by the converting unit to the sound signals, further comprising an estimating unit which estimate the current using environment information in accordance with a current usage pattern, wherein the converting unit converts using the environment information representing a using environment estimated by the estimating unit into using environment information in accordance with the usage pattern detected by the detecting unit, further comprising a storing unit which stores pieces of the using environment information representing the using environments in accordance with the usage pattern estimated by the estimating unit as associating with the usage pattern; wherein the converting unit converts the using environment information stored in the storing unit into current using environment information in accordance with the usage pattern detected by the detecting unit, wherein the suppressing unit performs the noise suppressing process while the current using environment information is being taken, wherein the suppressing unit performs the noise suppressing process with the current using environment information immediately after the usage patterns change, wherein the using environment information is information including at least one of a background noise level, statistic values of a background noise spectrum, information representing speech sections and noise sections, direction information representing a direction to a given sound source, direction information representing a direction to a noise source, an Signal to Noise ratio, and a correction value to correct a variation of sensitivities of the plurality of sound-receiving units.