Audio Signals as Buffered Streams of Audio Signals and Metadata

Abstract

Historically, most audio recording and communication control has been exerted through the use of physical buttons, slider and knobs, e.g. to start/stop recording or communicating, control speaker and microphone volume settings, etc. The present invention describes improvements to this approach, such as detecting and analyzing audio signals with human voice components, e.g. to start/stop recording and communicating, set local and remote recording and playback volumes and filters, and manage metadata associated with temporal ranges in audio streams. Audio signals have historically been seen as largely real-time, to be analyzed, acted on, recorded, transmitted, etc. immediately. The current invention treats audio signals as a buffered continuum, so that the system has historical access to audio signals and metadata, and may act on both past and future audio signals and metadata.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.