Bandlimiting anti-noise in personal audio devices having adaptive noise cancellation (ANC)

A method of canceling ambient audio sounds in the proximity of a transducer of a personal audio device, the method comprising:

• first measuring ambient audio sounds with a reference microphone to produce a reference microphone signal;
• second measuring an output of the transducer and the ambient audio sounds at the transducer with an error microphone;
• adaptively generating an anti-noise signal from a result of the first measuring and the second measuring to minimize the effects of ambient audio sounds at the error microphone by adapting a response of a first adaptive filter that filters an output of the reference microphone;
• combining the anti-noise signal with a source audio signal to generate an audio signal provided to the transducer;
• generating a shaped source audio signal from the source audio signal to minimize cancellation of the source audio sounds at the error microphone by filtering the source audio signal to generate the shaped source audio;
• subtracting the shaped source audio signal from the error microphone signal to generate an error signal, wherein the subtracting cancels components of the source audio signal present in the error microphone signal from appearing in the error signal, in order to prevent the first adaptive filter from cancelling components of the source audio signal when generating the anti-noise signal;
• filtering the error signal to weight one or more particular frequency regions within the response of the first adaptive filter by increasing or decreasing the gain applied to the error signal in one or more particular frequency regions, wherein the filtering weights frequency content of the error signal to compensate for a frequency response of an external acoustic path between the reference microphone and the error microphone;
• and
• providing a result of the filtering to a coefficient control of the first adaptive filter to shape the amplitude response of the first adaptive filter by correlating the result of the filtering with the reference microphone signal to generate coefficients that control the amplitude response of the first adaptive filter, so that, respective to and in conformity with the increasing or decreasing of the gain applied to the error signal in the one or more particular frequency regions relative to gain applied to other frequency regions within the response of the first adaptive filter, the coefficients are adjusted to increase or decrease the degree to which the anti-noise signal cancels the ambient audio sounds in the one or more particular frequency regions relative to the degree to which the anti-noise signal cancels the ambient audio sounds in the other frequency regions.

An integrated circuit for implementing at least a portion of a personal audio device, comprising:

• an output for providing a signal to a transducer including both source audio for playback to a listener and an anti-noise signal for countering the effects of ambient audio sounds in an acoustic output of the transducer;
• a reference microphone input for receiving a reference microphone signal indicative of the ambient audio sounds;
• an error microphone input for receiving an error microphone signal indicative of the output of the transducer and the ambient audio sounds at the transducer;
• and
• a processing circuit that implements a first adaptive filter having a response that generates the anti-noise signal from the reference microphone signal to reduce the presence of the ambient audio sounds heard by the listener, wherein the processing circuit shapes the response of the first adaptive filter in conformity with the error microphone signal and the reference microphone signal by adapting the response of the first adaptive filter to minimize the ambient audio sounds at the error microphone—according to coefficients generated by a coefficient control that receives an error signal derived from the error microphone signal, wherein the error signal is filtered by a filter implemented by the processing circuit to weight one or more particular frequency regions within the response of the first adaptive filter before being provided to the coefficient control, wherein the coefficient control computes the coefficients by correlating the error signal with the reference microphone signal, wherein the filter filters the error signal to weight a frequency content of the error signal to compensate for a frequency response of an external acoustic path between the reference microphone and the error microphone by causing the coefficients to be adjusted to increase or decrease the degree to which the anti-noise signal cancels the ambient audio sounds in the one or more particular frequency regions relative to the degree to which the anti-noise signal cancels the ambient audio sounds in other frequency regions by respectively increasing or decreasing a gain applied to the error signal in the one or more particular frequency regions relative to gain applied to the other frequency regions within the response of the first adaptive filter, wherein the processing circuit further implements a secondary path filter having a response that generates a shaped source audio signal and a combiner that subtracts the shaped source audio signal from the error microphone signal to generate the error signal, wherein the combiner cancels components of the source audio signal present in the error microphone signal in order to prevent the first adaptive filter from cancelling components of the source audio signal when generating the anti-noise signal.