The present invention relates to recording/reproducing apparatuses that collect sounds, which are emitted in multiple directions by a plurality of people participating in meetings, so as to record and/or reproduce sounds.
The present application claims priority on Japanese Patent Application No. 2008-213668 filed in Japan on Aug. 22, 2008 and Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2009-191242 filed in Japan on Aug. 20, 2009, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
Generally, sounds produced by a plurality of people participating in meetings are recorded, thereafter, the contents thereof are confirmed upon reproducing sounds; hence, a variety of recording/reproducing apparatuses and technologies such as Patent Document 1, have been developed. When a plurality of attendees participated in a meeting is speaking from their seated positions, a plurality of sounds is picked up using a plurality of microphones and recorded on a plurality of tracks (or channels) of multi-track digital recording/reproducing apparatuses (or multichannel digital recorders) such as one disclosed in Patent Document 1.
When the aforementioned recording/reproducing apparatuses reproduce recorded sounds after completion of meetings, operators do not need to listen to all the recorded sounds in time series but need to confirm only the statements of specific attendees in meetings. In the aforementioned recording/reproducing apparatuses, it is difficult to specify the tracks recording the statements of specific attendees in meetings and it is also difficult to grasp them by intuition. For this reason, operators need to search for the tracks recording the statements of specific attendees in meetings by reproducing sounds recorded on tracks one by one, which is troublesome.
A problem to be solved is that an operator (or a user) of a recording/reproducing apparatus is unable to specify the reproduce tracks (or reproduce channels) by intuition based on the seated positions of attendees in meetings.
A recording/reproducing apparatus of the present invention includes a plurality of unidirectional microphones and a plurality of direction indicator switches. In Embodiment 1, direction indicator switches are aligned on the housing, whilst unidirectional microphones are arranged in a sound collector disposed on the housing. In Embodiment 2, two arms are connected to the housing in a rotationally-adjustable manner, wherein they are each equipped with a unidirectional microphone and a direction indicator switch. In addition, direction indicator switches are able to indicate a plurality of directions designated by unidirectional microphones as well as other directions.
In a normal reproducing mode, a plurality of audio signals which are collected by unidirectional microphones is read in parallel and reproduced. When any one of direction indicator switches is operated, only the audio signal corresponding to the designated direction is selectively read and reproduced. When a direction other than a plurality of directions designated by unidirectional microphones is designated, audio signals picked up by two unidirectional microphones sandwiching the designated direction are selectively read and reproduced.
When a recording/reproducing apparatus of the present invention is adapted to a meeting to record its content, the recording/reproducing apparatus is disposed at the center of a conference table at which attendees of the meeting are seated, for example, so that the statements of attendees are subjected to multi-channel recording in parallel.
In a normal reproducing mode in which no direction indicator switch is operated, a plurality of audio signals subjected to multichannel recording is read and reproduced in parallel. When any one of the direction indicator switches is operated, only the audio signal corresponding to the designated direction is read and reproduced. That is, the user of the recording/reproducing apparatus is able to extract only the statement of a desired attendee in a meeting and confirm it upon reproduction by simply designating a specific direction.
When a recording/reproducing apparatus is adjusted in a setup direction so that unidirectional microphones are disposed to set their directivities towards attendees in a meeting in advance, the user is able to grasp the directions corresponding to specific attendees by intuition after completion of the recording of a meeting. In other words, upon setting the positional relationship between a recording/reproducing apparatus and a seating order of attendees in a meeting, the user is able to easily extract and reproduce only the statement of a specific attendee by operating a direction indicator switch. This eliminates a troublesome operation for selecting recording channels needed by the prior art.
In addition, it is possible to designate a large number of directions with a small number of unidirectional microphones; this simplifies the constitution of a recording/reproducing apparatus and improves the usability thereof.
In this connection, when a recording/reproducing apparatus is constituted of the housing and arms and equipped with angle sensors for detecting angles between the housing and the rotationally-adjustable arms, it is possible to compare angles of arms of a recording mode and angles of arms of a reproducing mode. In this case, when an angle of the recording mode matches an angle of the reproducing mode, a recording/reproducing operation is performed as described above, whereas when they do not match each other, it is possible to produce an alarm sound notifying the user of an inconsistency of angles.
A recording/reproducing apparatus of the present invention demonstrates the following effects.
When a recording/reproducing apparatus is adapted to a meeting, unidirectional microphones are disposed to set their directivities towards attendees, thus allowing the user to grasp the direction of a specific attendee by intuition.
Since direction indicator switches are able to designate directions whose number is larger than the number of unidirectional microphones, it is possible to pick up sound in an intermediate direction between the directions of two unidirectional microphones.
The alignment of unidirectional microphones in the recording/reproducing apparatus is not necessarily fixed, thus making it possible to adjust the directions of unidirectional microphones by adjusting angles of rotationally-adjustable arms. This makes it possible to assume a desired sound collection range and to adapt the recording/reproducing apparatus to various meetings.
Upon adjusting the positional relationship between unidirectional microphones of a recording/reproducing apparatus and a seating order of attendees in a meeting in advance, the user is able to extract and reproduce the statement of an attendee corresponding to a desired direction by simply operating a direction indicator switch; this does not need a troublesome operation for selecting recording channels.
The recording/reproducing apparatus 1 has a housing 10 of a rectangular parallelepiped shape having a low height, wherein a sound collector 11 having a cylindrical shape is disposed at the center of an upper surface of the housing 10. Speakers 14 are arranged on one side face 10a among four side faces of the housing 10. In the following description, the direction of the side face 10a arranging the speakers 14 will be referred to as a front direction.
The three microphones 12a, 12b, 12c are attached to the side face of the sound collector 11 with angular intervals of 120 degrees therebetween. Specifically, the microphone 12a is disposed in the front direction of the sound collector 11; the microphone 12b is disposed rightwards by 120 degrees from the front direction; and the microphone 12c is disposed leftwards by 120 degrees from the front direction. The microphones 12a, 12b, 12c are unidirectional microphones which are each disposed in a direction perpendicular to the center axis of the sound collector 11 (or a normal direction), wherein they have the directivity characteristics designated by solid-circles 120a, 120b, 120c in
An audio signal of the microphone 12a and an audio signal of the microphone 12b are added together so as to reproduce sound with the intermediate directivity characteristic denoted by a dotted-circle 120d shown in
In a counterclockwise direction in
In
The recording/reproducing apparatus 1 shown in
The control unit 20 is configured of a microcomputer, which realizes various functions upon executing predetermined programs. The control unit 20 includes four functional blocks, namely a write unit 21, a channel select unit 22, a read unit 23, and a mixing unit 24. The functional blocks will be described in detail as follows.
The control unit 20 is connected to an operation unit 35 including the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6 as well as recording/reproducing-related operators, a recording unit 40 which is a large-scale storage unit consisting of a hard-disk unit or a flash memory, and a D/A converter 32. The recording unit 40 records audio signals picked up by the microphones 12a, 12b, 12c. The D/A converter 32 is connected to an analog audio amplifier 33. The analog audio amplifier 33 is connected to the speaker disposed on the side face 10a of the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 in the front direction. The recording/reproducing apparatus 1 provides a single reproducing system constituted of the speakers 14 in connection with three recording systems constituted of the three microphones 12a, 12b, 12c.
In a recording mode, the write unit 21 records three digital signals output from the A/D converters 31a, 31b, 31c on three channels of the recording unit 40.
In the recording unit 40 of the recording/reproducing apparatus 1, an audio signal of the microphone 12a is recorded on a channel CH1; an audio signal of the microphone 12b is recorded on a channel CH2; and an audio signal of the microphone 12c is recorded on a channel CH3.
The channel select unit 22 selects a read channel of the recording unit 40 so as to issue a read instruction to the read unit 23. In a normal reproducing mode in which the user does not operate the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6, the channel select unit 22 selects all the channels CH1 through CH3. In a direction-designated reproducing mode in which the user operates one of the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6, the channel select unit 22 selects a channel recording sound incoming in the designated direction. When the user operates the direction indicator switch 15-1 to designate the direction D1, for example, the channel select unit 22 selects the channel CH1 recording an audio signal picked up by the microphone 12a. When the user operates the direction indicator switch 15-2 to designate the direction D2, the channel select unit 22 selects the channels CH1 and CH2 recording audio signals picked up by the microphones 12a and 12b.
The read unit 23 reads a digital audio signal, recorded on the channel selected by the channel select unit 22, from the recording unit 40, thus supplying it to the mixing unit 24. When the read unit 23 reads a digital audio signal of one channel from the recording unit 40, the mixing unit 24 directly supplies the digital audio signal to the D/A converter 32. When the read unit 23 reads a plurality of digital audio signals, corresponding to two channels or three channels, from the recording unit 40, the mixing unit 24 mixes digital audio signals, thus supplying a mixed digital audio signal to the D/A converter 32. The D/A converter 32 converts digital audio signals, supplied from the mixing unit 24, into analog audio signals, which are supplied to the audio amplifier 33. The audio amplifier 33 amplifies analog audio signals and supplies them to the speaker 14, thus producing sounds.
When the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 is adapted to the recording of a meeting, the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 is arranged at the center position among a plurality of attendees, wherein the user operates a recording switch. Thus, the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 records the statement of attendees in a meeting on the three channels CH1 through CH3 in the recording unit 40.
In a normal reproducing mode for reproducing sound recoded on the recording unit 40, the user operates a play switch so that the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 simultaneously reads a plurality of audio signals recorded on the three channels CH1 through CH3 and subsequently mixes on audio signals, thus reproducing them. That is, when the user does not operate the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6 and thereby does not designate any direction, a plurality of audio signals recorded on the three channels CH1 through CH3 of the recording unit 40 is read in parallel, so that incoming sounds in the perimeter of the sound collector 11 are reproduced with the same level. When the user designates one of the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6, the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 reads only the sound, incoming in the designated direction, from the counterpart channel of the recording unit 40, thus reproducing it. Thus, only the statement of an attendee seated in the designated direction among a plurality of attendees participated in a meeting is selectively read and reproduced.
The user needs to recall a seating order of attendees in a meeting and operate the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6, thus selectively reproducing the statements of attendees. In other words, the user is allowed to operate one of the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6, commensurate with a desired direction, based on a seating order of attendees in a meeting, thus selecting a reproducing direction.
Next, an example in which the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 is adapted to an actual meeting will be described with reference to
As shown in
In response to the attendee A, who is presiding over a meeting and who asks a question of “How about this case?”, the attendee B makes a statement of “I prefer Plan A”; the attendee C makes a statement of “No, I prefer Plan B”; and the attendee D makes a statement of “I think we need to reconsider our plans!”. The attendees A through D make their statements without waiting for completion of a previous statement, so that
In the normal reproducing mode of the recorded contents described above, all the statements of the attendees A through D are reproduced on the three channels CH1 through CH3 in accordance with the same condition, allowing the user to grasp the overall atmosphere of a meeting, whereas the statements of the attendees A through D are reproduced such that they are partially overlapped with each other. When the user operates the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 so as to change a reproducing state, for example, when the user operates the direction indicator switch 15-1 at time t1, the reproducing channel is switched over to the channel CH1 commensurate with the direction D1, so that only the sound of the attendee B seated in the direction D1 is selectively reproduced. In this case, the reproducing position of the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 is automatically rewound back to a time code T1 indicating a top position of the sound of the attendee B. This process allows the user to listen to the sound of an attendee, which the user would like to confirm, from its top position. In this connection, the top position of each sound can be detected based on tone-volume variations.
When the user operates the direction indicator switch 15-4 designating the direction D4 at time t2, the reproducing channel is switched over to the channels CH2 and CH3 commensurate with the direction D4, so that only the sound of the attendee D seated in the direction D4 is selectively reproduced. At this time, the reproducing position is rewound back to a time code T2 indicating the top position of the sound of the attendee D.
When the play switch is operated while the reproducing operation is progressing (so that a decision result of step S1 is “YES”), a decision is made as to whether the reproducing operation is a perimeter-direction reproducing operation of a normal mode or a reproducing operation dedicated to only the channel of the designated direction (step S3). In the case of the reproducing operation dedicated to only the channel of the designated direction (so that a decision result of step S3 is “NO”), the control unit 20 switches over to the perimeter-direction reproducing operation (step S4). On the other hand, when the play switch is operated while the perimeter-direction reproducing operation is progressing (so that a decision result of step S3 is “YES”), the flow shown in
When one of the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6 is operated, the control unit 20 makes a decision as to whether or not the reproducing operation is currently progressing (step S5). When the reproducing operation is not progressing (so that a decision result of step S5 is “NO”), a reproducing operation is started on only the channel commensurate with the direction designated by the operated direction indicator switch (step S6). On the other hand, when any one of the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6 is operated while the reproducing operation is progressing (so that a decision result of step S5 is “YES”), the control unit 20 searches for the top position of a previous statement made in the designated direction so as to rewind recorded sound (step S7); subsequently, it starts reproducing only the channel of the designated direction from the rewound position (step S8).
In this connection, when the user operates the play suspend switch, an audio reproduction is suspended at the currently reproduced position. Alternatively, when the user operates the play stop switch or terminates a recording/reproducing operation, the recording/reproducing apparatus 1 exits the reproduction processes shown in
Next, a recording/reproducing apparatus 2 according to Embodiment 2 of the present invention will be described in detail.
A unidirectional microphone 55-1 is attached to a front side face 50a among three side faces of the housing 50. In addition, a direction indicator switch 56-1 for designating the direction of the microphone 55-1 and speakers 53 are arranged on the upper surface of the housing 50.
The arms 51, 52 are attached to the opposite sides of the front side face 50a of the housing 50 via hinges (not shown) in a rotationally-adjustable manner. A unidirectional microphone 55-2 is attached to a side face of the arm 51, while a direction indicator switch 56-2 for designating the direction of the microphone 55-2 is arranged on the upper surface. A unidirectional microphone 55-3 is attached to a side face of the arm 52, while a direction indicator switch 56-3 for designating the direction of the microphone 55-3 is arranged on the upper surface.
Upon installing the recording/reproducing apparatus 2, the user is allowed to revolve the arms 51, 52 so that the three microphones 55-1 through 55-3 can be each directed in a desired direction. Angle sensors 41, 42 (see
When the user operates the play switch, the angle comparison unit 25 compares the detected angles of the angle sensors 41, 42 (i.e. recording-mode angles) recorded on the recording unit 40 with the angles currently detected by the angle sensors 41, 42 (i.e. reproducing-mode angles). When the recording-mode angles agree with the reproducing-mode angles, the control unit 20 starts a sound reproducing operation. When the recording-mode angles disagree with the reproducing-mode angles, the control unit 20 drives the alarm unit 45 so as to produce alarm sound, thus requesting the user to change the angles of the arms 51, 52. The alarm sound is produced when the reproducing-mode angle of the arm 51 is smaller/larger than the recording-mode angle and when the reproducing-mode angle of the arm 52 is smaller/larger than the recording-mode angle.
When the play switch is operated while the reproducing operation is progressing (so that a decision result of step S11 is “YES”), the control unit 20 makes a decision as to whether the reproducing operation is a perimeter-direction reproducing operation of a normal mode or a decision as to whether it is a reproducing operation dedicated to only the channel of the designated direction (step S16). In the case of the reproducing operation dedicated to only the channel of the designated direction (in which a decision result of step S16 is “NO”), the control unit 20 switches to the perimeter-direction reproducing operation (step S17). In the case of the perimeter-direction reproducing operation (in which a decision result of step S16 is “YES”), the control unit 20 exits the flow of
When one of the direction indicator switches 15-1 through 15-6 is operated, the control unit 20 makes a decision as to whether or not the reproducing operation is currently progressing (step S21). When the reproducing operation is not currently progressing (so that a decision result of step S21 is “NO”), the control unit 20 reads current angles from the angle sensors 41, 42 so as to compare them with the recording-mode angles recorded on the recording unit 40 (step S22), thus making a decision as to whether or not they match each other (step S23). When they agree with each other (so that a decision result of step S23 is “YES”), the control unit 20 starts a reproducing operation using only the channel laid in the direction designated by the operated direction indicator switch (step S25). When they disagree with each other (so that a decision result of step S23 is “NO”), the control unit 20 drives the alarm unit 45 to produce alarm sound, thus requesting the user to change the angles of the arms 51, 52 (step S24). Thereafter, the control unit 20 exits the flow of
When any one of direction indicator switches is operated while the reproducing operation is progressing (so that a decision result of step S21 is “YES”), the control unit 20 searches for a top position of a previous statement made in the designated direction so as to rewind the recorded contents (step S26); subsequently, it starts reproducing only the channel of the designated direction from the rewound position (step S27).
Similar to Embodiment 1 (see
As described above, the recording/reproducing apparatus 2 of Embodiment 2 is designed to perform sound reproduction with the same installation position as the recording mode; this allows the user to select the direction for the sound reproduction based on the seating order of attendees in the recording mode. In other words, it is unnecessary to establish the positional relationship between recording channels and attendees in a meeting, wherein the user is able to easily select recording channels for attendees in a meeting.
Embodiment 1 and Embodiment 2 are described with respect to the recording/reproducing operations of statements of attendees in a meeting, wherein the recording/reproducing apparatus of the present invention can be applied to fields other than sound recording/reproducing operations of minutes of meetings.
In addition, the sound collection unit of Embodiment 1 and Embodiment 2 are constituted using unidirectional microphones; but this is not a restriction. For example, the sound collection unit of the recording/reproducing apparatus can be embodied using a plurality of sound-collection beams collected in a microphone array disclosed in Patent Document 2.
The present invention provides a recording/reproducing apparatus having a fixed sound-collection directivity or a movable sound-collection directivity; hence, the present invention can be applied to a broad range of recording/reproducing fields adapted to meetings, discussions, in-house deliberations, which are each constituted of a plurality of attendees' statements.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2008213668 | Aug 2008 | JP | national |
2009191242 | Aug 2009 | JP | national |
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/JP2009/004036 | 8/21/2009 | WO | 00 | 2/15/2011 |