Patent ID: 7804963

Claim:
A method for controlling a sound system by determining changes that occur between a current working state and a reference working state of the sound system, the method comprising: (A) generating, for each speaker hp j of a plurality of speakers, one after another, a first predetermined sound signal as an output signal of the speaker hp j , and retrieving, for each microphone m i of a plurality of microphones, the output signal generated by the microphone in response to the first predetermined sound signal generated by each speaker hp j , said sound system being in the reference working state; (B) generating and saving a reference matrix Q r of response data, said reference matrix Q r comprising a response data hp j m i for each speaker hp j and each microphone m i , each response data hp j m i being characteristic of a sound-reproducing subsystem including the speaker hp j and the microphone m i in the reference working state, and each response data being determined by using the output signal retrieved for the microphone m i in response to the first predetermined signal output by the speaker hp i ; (C) determining changes over time between the current working state and the reference working state of the sound system by: generating a current matrix Q of response data by performing (A) and (B) with a second predetermined sound signal, said sound system being in the current working state, and comparing the current matrix Q with the reference matrix Q r by computing from the reference matrix Q r and the current matrix Q respectively, a mean value for each speaker hp j or for each microphone m i , and determining if a ratio of the respective mean values is outside of a predetermined range of values; and (D) controlling the sound system by selectively adjusting the sound system in response to the changes determined in (C), when the ratio is outside of the predetermined range of values.