Patent ID: 8005672

Claim:
An audio signal processing circuit, comprising: a speech detector that receives a multi-component audio signal including at least a left signal component and a right signal component, and provides a control signal indicative of whether the received audio signal contains speech, wherein the speech detector combines the left and the right signal components to provide a combined signal component and comprises a processing device that detects speech by comparing and processing the combined signal component, the left signal component and the right signal component; and a speech processor that receives the multi-component audio signal and the control signal, and modifies the received multi-component audio signal if the control signal indicates that the received multi-component audio signal contains speech and provides a processed modified multi-component audio signal that includes (A) a modified left signal component that comprises the sum of (i) the left signal component multiplied by a first factor K1 and (ii) the right signal component multiplied by a second factor K2, and (B) a modified right signal component that comprises the sum of (i) the left signal component multiplied by a third factor K3 and (ii) the right signal component multiplied by a fourth factor K4, and provides the received multi-component audio signal if the control signal indicates that the received audio signal does not contain speech, where the values for K1, K2, K3 and K4 are set as a function of the control signal value; where the speech processor comprises a speech improvement device configured to modify the speech component of the received audio signal.