User programmable station set bass and treble control

Details User programmable station set bass and treble control User programmable station set bass and treble control

1998-06-19

2001-07-17

Dorvil, Richemond (Department: 2741)

Telephonic communications

Supervisory or control line signaling

Using line or loop condition detection

C379S347000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06263074

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a user-programmable bass and treble control on a telephone station set and, more particularly, to the use of tones outside the voice band to control (increase/decrease) the bass and treble levels.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
In a typical digital loop carrier transmission system, such as Subscriber Loop Carrier (SLC®) systems, digital transmission takes place between a local digital switch and a remote terminal. The customer lines, or loops, couple customer premise equipment (such as a station set) to the remote terminal through channel units located at the remote terminal.
Due to variations in the lengths of the loops, it has been recognized that it is often necessary to add a certain amount of loss to the signals between the remote terminal and the station set in both the “off-hook” and “on-hook” states in order to protect against too loud of a signal for the shorter loops. In the case of the on-hook state, the standard approach has been to add a constant amount of loss to all customers coupled to the remote terminal. This has been effective in the past since there was a minimal amount of reflection back to the remote terminal.
To achieve better performance, it has been recognized that it would be advantageous to measure the actual impedance of the line and then set the receive and transmit equalizers (as well as other parameters) to match this measured value. Our co-pending application entitled “Line-Compensating Codec”, Ser. No. 08/915,978, filed Oct. 22, 1997, discloses the utilization of a DSP in the remote terminal codec which ascertains the actual impedance presented by the line to which a station set is connected when the line is on-hook and also, without interfering with call processing, when the line is off-hook, by making the measurements before the return of dial tone and/or during interdigital interval of subscriber call signaling.
Although this capability to provide “real time” impedance adjustment is a significant improvement, each subscriber has individual preferences regarding sound quality. That is, some individuals prefer a “strong” bass and “weak” treble, some vice-versa, and still others may prefer “balanced” bass and treble in sound quality
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The need remaining in the prior art is addressed by the present invention, which relates to a user-programmable bass and treble control on a telephone station set and, more particularly, to the use of out-of-band tones to control (increase/decrease) the bass and treble levels.
In particular, an exemplary station set is configured so as to be able to produce specific out-of-band tones, each tone representing an aspect of “bass” or “treble”. For example, a tone of 3.4 kHz may be associated with “decrease” bass, a tone of 3.6 kHz may be associated with “increase” bass, 3.8 kHz with “decrease” treble and 4.0 kHz with “increase” treble. It is to be understood that any desired frequencies outside of the nominal voice band (i.e., 0-3 kHz) may be used and the set defined above is considered exemplary only. A central office line card (also defined as a “remote terminal”) is configured to include a tone detector in the receive signal path. Upon reception of any these pre-defined tones, the tone detector transmits a control signal to a programmable equalization filter disposed in the transmit signal path within the line card. Any wellknown programmable equalization filter may be used and is capable of increasing/decreasing bass and treble in response to the tone detector control signal.
Advantageously, the far-end of the telephone conversation is oblivious to any bass/treble adjustments being performed by the near-end subscriber. In one embodiment of the present invention, the programmable equalization filter may be configured to detect an “on-hook” signal so as to reset the filter to a predetermined bass/treble condition at call completion. Otherwise, the subsequently-received telephone call will utilize the final value of the programmable filter set during the previous call.
Other and further advantages and features of the present invention will become apparent during the course of the following discussion and by reference to the accompanying drawing.


REFERENCES:
patent: 5471527 (1995-11-01), Ho et al.
patent: 5852610 (1998-12-01), Olaniyan
patent: 5896449 (1999-04-01), Oshidari et al.

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