Patent ID: 6931138

Claim:
A zoom microphone device having an audio zooming function of effectively enhancing a target sound in accordance with a zoom position, said device comprising: a pickup section for transducing soundwaves to audio signals; a zoom control section for outputting a zoom position signal corresponding to the zoom position; a directivity control section for altering directivity characteristics of said zoom microphone device based on the zoom position signal outputted from said zoom control section; and a noise suppression section for suppressing background noise contained in the audio signals outputted from said pickup section; wherein said directivity control section is operable to alter the directivity characteristics so as to enhance the target sound under a telescopic operation, and said noise suppression section is operable to apply a greater degree of suppression to the background noise contained in the audio signals under the telescopic operation than under a wide-angle operation; and said noise suppression section is operable to suppress the background noise by using at least one technique selected from a Wiener filter technique, a spectral subtraction technique, and a filter bank technique.