Patent ID: 7676044

Claim:
A method for detecting a speaker layout configuration in an audio system including a plurality of speaker devices and a server apparatus that generates, from an input audio signal, a speaker signal to be supplied to each of the plurality of speaker devices in accordance with locations of the plurality of speaker devices, the method comprising: a first step for capturing a sound emitted at a location of a listener with a pickup unit mounted in each of the plurality of speaker devices and for transmitting an audio signal of the captured sound from each of the speaker devices to the server apparatus; a second step for analyzing the audio signal transmitted from each of the plurality of speaker devices in the first step and for calculating a distance difference between a distance of the location of the listener to a speaker device closest to the listener and the distance of the location of the listener to each of the plurality of speaker devices; a third step for emitting a predetermined sound from one of the speaker devices in response to a command signal from the server apparatus and calculating angles between the speakers; a fourth step for capturing the predetermined sound, emitted in the third step, with the pickup units of the speaker devices other than the speaker device that has emitted the predetermined sound and transmitting an audio signal of the captured sound to the server apparatus; a fifth step for analyzing the audio signal transmitted in the fourth step from the speaker devices other than the speaker device that has emitted the predetermined sound and for calculating a speaker-to-speaker distance between each of the speaker devices that have transmitted the audio signal in the fourth step and the speaker device that has emitted the predetermined sound; a sixth step for repeating the third step through the fifth step until all speaker-to-speaker distances and angles between the speakers of the plurality of speaker devices are obtained; and a seventh step for calculating a layout configuration of the plurality of speaker devices based on a distance difference of each of the plurality of speaker devices obtained in the second step, the angles between the speakers and speaker-to-speaker distances of the plurality of speaker devices obtained in the fifth step.