1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the distribution and customization of audio data products, like telephone signals, music batch files, and streaming audio data. In particular, the present invention provides for distribution of audio data products customized according to a hearing profile of a customer.
2. Description of Related Art
The hearing profiles of individuals vary in a number of ways. The ability to hear sounds varies with frequency among individuals across the normal audio frequency range. Also, the dynamic range varies among individuals so that levels of audio stimulus that are perceived as soft sounds and levels of audio stimulus that are perceived as loud sounds differ from person to person. Standard hearing tests are designed to produce an audiogram that characterizes such factors as frequency sensitivity and dynamic range in the hearing profiles of individuals. There are also other factors that affect a hearing profile. For example, psycho-acoustic factors concerning the manner in which a person perceives combinations of normal sounds affect the ability to hear in manners that can vary from person to person. Also, environmental factors such as the usual listening environment of a person (library, conference room, concert hall) and the equipment on which the sound is produced (loud speaker, ear phones, telephone hand set), are important. In persons wearing hearing aids or using other assistive hearing devices, the type of aid or device affects the hearing profile. The physiology of an impairment suffered by the individual may also be an important factor in the hearing profile.
Audio products that are distributed to customers in digital or analog electronic form are intended for persons having hearing profiles within a normal range. For example, a popular compression technique for musical compositions being distributed across the Internet, known as MP3, is based on the psycho-acoustic model of a typical listener. Thus, some persons have hearing profiles that may interfere with enjoyment of the MP3 compressed music. Other persons may have hearing profiles which make it difficult to understand normal telephone conversations using audio data from the telephone network. Also, individuals may have hearing profiles which make it impossible to enjoy a musical composition in the way in which it was intended by the composer or musician, even if it were played back with very high fidelity. Other audio data products, such as streaming audio over the Internet, audio accompanying television programs, radio broadcasts, live radio format broadcasts over the Internet, prerecorded audio books and the like, may be difficult for persons having some hearing profiles to fully enjoy.
The hearing profiles of individuals have been applied in the hearing aid field for customizing and fitting hearing aids for individuals. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,731,850 entitled PROGRAMMABLE DIGITAL HEARING AID SYSTEM, invented by Levitt et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,848,171 entitled HEARING AID DEVICE INCORPORATING SIGNAL PROCESSING TECHNIQUES, invented by Stockham, Jr. et al. Thus, techniques for processing sound to offset variations in hearing are well known. However, these techniques are unavailable to persons not using hearing aids. Furthermore, many persons who could benefit from such processing are not in positions to use hearing aids, for a variety of reasons.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide systems and methods to apply techniques for the processing of audio data according to hearing profiles for the benefit of individuals who are not wearing hearing assistance devices. Also it is desirable to provide tools to simplify the gathering of information needed to develop hearing profiles of individuals, and to apply the gathered information in the distribution and customization of audio data products.