Patent Application
20050232375
This invention relates generally to digital radios and, more particularly, to employing the digital radio to improve the performance of the digital radio for the user. Many features affecting the performance now controlled manually by a user can be controlled automatically.
At the present time in digital radios, a multiplicity of formats for broadcast band transmission is in use. The common factor is the inclusion, in a transmitted signal of at least one digitally modulated channel in the transmitted channel. Referring to
As will be clear to those skilled in the art, the foregoing description is meant to be illustrative rather than comprehensive. Part of the problem resides in the fact that at the present time, the format of the digital radio broadcast band has not been standardized. As indicated above, the definition of a digital radio broadcast band includes the requirement that at least one of the channels within the broadcast band is encoded digitally. The remaining channels can be encoded with analog and/or digital encoding. Typically, the broadcast band includes a performance channel, the contents of which are applied to the digital radio's speakers for the user. In addition, generally, at least one digital channel, referred hereinafter as the information channel, includes the identification of the properties of an associated performance band or performance bands. The properties can include an identification of the performance piece, the principal artists, the category or categories best identifying the piece, the type of performance pieces broadcast in the transmission band, etc. In some implementations, the performance channel(s) is (are) combined with the information channel(s). The properties of the associated performance channel(s) can be presented to the user as audio or visual information permitting the user to make a choice that can be entered manually in the digital radio.
The entry of the user input alters the configuration of the digital radio. When the information channel identifies a category of material broadcast over this band or the category of an associated performance piece, the user can use a technique generally referred to as equalization to enhance the performance. In equalization, the frequency spectrum of the demodulated and decoded performance piece is divided into a plurality of frequency bands. The amplification of the frequency bands is selected for each frequency region to enhance the performance, for the user, for that particular category of performance piece. The user can be provided with controls so the equalization can be performed for each performance piece or for a plurality of similar performance pieces.
A need has therefore been felt for apparatus and an associated method having the feature that the information band of a digital radio broadcast band can used to control automatically the reproduction of the performance channel. It would be a further feature of the present invention to provide for apparatus monitoring the information channel of a digital radio broadcast band. It would be a still further feature of the apparatus and associated method to provide a digital radio that is automatically reconfigured in response to a selected signal group in the information channel of a digital signal broadcast band. It would be still further feature of the apparatus and associated method to control automatically and selectively the relative amplitudes of predetermined frequency ranges of demodulated, decoded performance channels.
The aforementioned and other features are accomplished, according to the present invention, by providing apparatus and the associated software in a digital radio for monitoring an information channel for certain preselected signal groups and, based on the preselected signal groups, preparing a performance channel for application to the speaker system. When a preselected signal group is identified, then the digital radio reconfigures itself automatically into a user-designated configuration. For example, in response to preselected signals, the digital radio will control the relative amplitude of frequency ranges in the demodulated, decoded performance channel to enhance automatically the audio material presented to the user.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will be more clearly understood upon reading of the following description and the accompanying drawings and claims.
Referring next to
The present invention monitors the information channel of a digital radio broadcast band. In response to selected signals in the information channel, the digital radio receiver is automatically reconfigured to provide for user-selected processing of the performance channel. The reconfiguration can be relatively simple. In response to selected signal groups, the digital radio signal can process an audio performance track in a frequency-determined manner, i.e., equalization. The reconfiguration is performed without user intervention, the user having during a set-up period, identified the selected signal groups and the associated response to the selected signal groups.
The reconfiguration can be as simple as setting a switch or can involve invoking a software procedure that specifies the processing of the performance channels. In addition, the information channel can include signal groups concerning the content of all the performance items of the broadcast band. In this situation, the digital radio can be configured to provide the enhanced performance for the performance items of the broadcast band to which the digital radio is tuned.
While the invention has been described with respect to the embodiments set forth above, the invention is not necessarily limited to these embodiments. Accordingly, other embodiment variations, and improvements not described herein, are not necessarily excluded from the scope of the invention, the scope of the invention being defined by the following claims.
