JP2000122694A - Sound recording and regenerating device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To record and regenerate plural sounds, channel by channel different each other. SOLUTION: In this sound recording and regenerating device, coded data of sounds input from microphones 1, 2 are stored in corresponding channel regions of a recording medium 11 set by switching of a sound recording channel switching switch 131, and the sound data in the channel region of the recording medium 11 corresponding to a regeneration channel set by switching of a regeneration channel switching switch 132 is regenerated thereafter.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an audio recording / reproducing apparatus capable of recording audio on a plurality of channels.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, an audio recording / reproducing apparatus for recording / reproducing audio includes a monaural type which is suitable for recording audio such as dictation on the spot and a content of a conference, and a voice recording / reproducing apparatus. Instead, there is known a stereo type that is suitable for identifying a source of voice in a conference or the like by recording voice on two channels.

In the latter stereo-type sound recording / reproducing apparatus, for example, when used for recording an interview or the like, it is not so important to specify the listener and the speaker, and the contents of the statements of the listener and the speaker are important. In such a case, it is often the case that only the listener or the speaker is desired to be selected and reproduced from the recorded contents.

[0004]

However, according to the sound recording by the stereo system, the left and right channels record the sounds of the listener and the speaker, respectively, although the sound levels of the listener and the speaker are different. Therefore, for example, when it is desired to reproduce only the voice of the speaker, the reproduction has to be performed while skipping the voice portion of the listener, and there is a problem that it takes time and effort. The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and has as its object to provide an audio recording / reproducing apparatus capable of recording and reproducing a plurality of audios for different channels.

[0005]

According to the first aspect of the present invention,
Voice input means for inputting a plurality of voices, recording channel switching means for switching and setting a recording channel of audio data input from the voice input means, a recording medium having a plurality of channel areas, and the recording channel switching means. Audio recording means for recording audio data in a channel area of the recording medium corresponding to the set recording channel; reproduction channel switching means for switching and setting a reproduction channel in the channel area of the recording means; and the reproduction channel switching means. Audio reproduction means for reproducing audio data in a channel area of the recording medium corresponding to the set reproduction channel.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, in the first aspect of the present invention, the audio reproducing means includes the presence / absence of audio data in a channel area of the recording medium corresponding to the reproduction channel set by the reproduction channel switching means. Is determined, and when the silent data is determined by the determining means, a reproduction position having audio data following the silent data is located.

As a result, according to the first aspect of the present invention,
A plurality of input sounds can be separately recorded in different channel areas of the recording medium, and the sound data of each of these channels can be reproduced separately.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, since the silent position data area can be quickly skipped by the reproduction position correction processing, only the recorded audio data can be efficiently reproduced.

[0009]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. (First Embodiment) FIG. 1 shows a schematic configuration of a digital audio recording / reproducing apparatus capable of recording and reproducing stereo audio signals of two channels on the left and right to which the present invention is applied.

In the figure, reference numerals 1 and 2 denote left channels L,
A microphone as audio input means of the right channel R, of which the microphone 1 is via an amplifier 3, a low-pass filter 5, and an A / D converter 7, and the microphone 2 is an amplifier 4, a low-pass filter 6, an A / D
Each is connected to a digital signal processing unit 9 via a converter 8. Further, the digital signal processing unit 9 outputs the D /
A converter 13, low-pass filter 15, amplifier 1
7 and a speaker 19 and an external output terminal 20, and a D / A converter 14, a low-pass filter 16, and an amplifier 18.
And an external output terminal 20.

The digital signal processing section 9 is connected to the system control section 10 and executes digital processing of an audio signal accompanying audio recording and reproduction based on a control command from the system control section 10.

The system control unit 10 includes a recording medium 11,
The operation button 12 and the channel switching means 130 are connected. In this case, the recording medium 11 has a plurality of (two channels in the illustrated example) channel areas for recording audio data, and various types such as a flash memory, a magneto-optical disk, a digital tape, and a magnetic disk are conceivable. However, here, a flash memory of about 2 to 8 megabytes is used.

The operation buttons 12 include a recording button REC, a reproduction button PL
AY, stop button STOP, fast forward button FF and fast rewind button R
Has EW. The channel switching unit 130 includes a recording channel switching switch 131 that is a recording channel switching unit that switches and sets a recording channel, and a playback channel switching switch 132 that is a playback channel switching unit that switches and sets a playback channel. The recording channel switch 131 is connected to the left channel LC.
H, right channel RCH and OFF can be switched. The reproduction channel changeover switch 132 has a left channel LCH and a right channel RCH.
And OFF can be switched.

Next, the operation of the embodiment configured as described above will be described. First, in the flowchart shown in FIG. 2, when the recording button REC of the operation button 12 is operated in step 201, a recording mode is set by the system control unit 10.

Next, in step 202, when sound is input to the microphones 1 and 2, the input sound is
4, unnecessary frequency domain components are cut by low-pass filters 5 and 6 in order to prevent generation of aliasing noise, and are converted into digital signals by A / D converters 7 and 8. Is entered.

From this state, in step 203, the state of the recording channel switch 131 is determined. If the recording channel switch 131 is not OFF, the process proceeds to step 204, and it is determined whether the recording channel switch 131 is switched to the left channel LCH. If the recording channel changeover switch 131 has been switched to the left channel LCH, in step 205, the system control unit 10 instructs the digital signal processing unit 9 to set all the right channel R audio data from the microphone 2 to 0, That is, no data is set, and in step 206, the right channel R, which is no data, is set.
And the audio data of the left channel L from the microphone 1 are encoded, and the encoded data is output to the system control unit 10. Thus, step 2
At 07, the encoded audio data input to the system control unit 10 is recorded in a flash memory as the recording medium 11 via a buffer (not shown). In this case, T in FIG.
As shown in FIG. 1, the audio data of the left channel L is recorded in the left channel region L of the recording medium 11, and the non-data of the right channel L is recorded in the right channel region R in a silent state.

On the other hand, if the recording channel changeover switch 131 has been switched to the right channel RCH in step 204, the system control unit 10 issues a command to the digital signal processing unit 9 to issue a command from the microphone 1 to the left channel in step 208. All the audio data of the channel L are set to 0, that is, no data. In step 206, the data of the left channel L, which is no data, and the audio data of the right channel R from the microphone 2 are encoded, and the encoded data is obtained. The data is output to the system control unit 10. Thus, the encoded audio data input to the system control unit 10 is recorded on the recording medium 11 in step 207. In this case, as shown by T2 in FIG. 3, audio data of the right channel R is recorded in the right channel area R of the recording medium 11, and non-data of the left channel L is recorded in the left channel area L.
Is recorded silently.

As described above, the recording channel switch 131 is moved from the left channel LCH to the right channel R
When the recording channel is switched to CH, that is, when the recording channel is switched from the left channel L to the right channel R, the system controller 10 causes the audio file shown in FIG. Of the end of the recording of the audio data of the left channel L (audio end position information) and the address position information of the start end of the recording of the right channel R (audio start position information). Written with the recording time. Of course, the recording channel switch 131 is moved from the right channel RCH to the left channel LCH.
Also, the audio end position information of the audio data of the right channel R and the audio start position information of the left channel L are written in the file header FH together with the recording time.

Thereafter, at step 209, a stop button STO
The state of P is determined, and if it has been operated, the process is terminated,
If not, the process returns to step 202 and the same operation as described above is repeated.

In the recording mode shown in FIG. 2, when the state of the recording channel switch 131 in step 203 is determined, the recording channel switch 131 is turned off.
If it is set to FF, the process immediately proceeds to step 206, where the audio data of the left and right channels from the microphones 1 and 2 are all encoded by the digital signal processing unit 9, and the left side of the recording medium 11 is It is written in the channel area and the right channel area as a normal stereo recording.

In this way, for example, when used for recording such as an interview, the recording channel switch 131 is set to the left channel LCH and the right channel R
Change the listener's voice to the left channel L while switching to CH,
If the voice of the speaker is recorded on the right channel R, the listener and the speaker can be recorded on different channels.

Here, in the case of a tape-shaped recording medium, different tracks are assigned to the respective channels. For example, while recording is performed on the left channel L as in the section T1 in FIG. Since no sound is produced in the channel R, the recording medium is not effectively used. However, by using a solid-state memory as the recording medium 11, for example, the section T1 in FIG. If information is recorded that the sound is recorded on the channel L and the sound is recorded on the right channel R from the beginning of the T2 section, no memory is wasted for the silent part of the right channel R in the T1 section. Therefore, it is possible to perform recording separately for the left channel L and the right channel R with a memory capacity for one channel.

Next, in the flowchart shown in FIG. 4, when the play button PLAY of the operation button 12 is operated in step 401, the system controller 10 sets the play mode.

By setting the reproduction mode, step 40
In step 2, a reproduction position is detected, and in step 403, reproduction position correction processing for skipping and reproducing silent data is performed. This reproduction position correction processing is performed in step 50 as shown in FIG.
In step 1, the state of the reproduction channel switch 132 is determined. Here, the reproduction channel switch 132
Is OFF, the process returns to the reproduction mode shown in FIG. 4 without performing the correction process. On the other hand, if the reproduction channel switch 132 is not OFF, the flow advances to step 502 to determine whether or not the reproduction position data of the currently switched channel is silent. That is, if the reproduction channel changeover switch 132 has been switched to the left channel LCH, the system control unit 10 detects whether the reproduction position of the left channel L is silent, and when the silent position is detected, proceeds to step 503. Skip to the audio start position of the next audio data, and return to the reproduction mode shown in FIG. The playback channel changeover switch 132 is set to the right channel RC.
A similar process is performed when the mode is switched to H.

If it is determined in step 502 that the reproduction position data of the currently switched channel is not silent, the process proceeds to step 504, where it is determined whether the current position is the audio end position. If it is not the audio end position, the process returns to the reproduction mode shown in FIG. 4 without performing the correction processing. If the audio end position is determined, the process skips to the audio start position of the next audio data in step 503, and returns to the reproduction mode shown in FIG.

Returning to FIG. 4, in step 404, the system control unit 10 fetches the left channel L and right channel R encoded data from the recording medium 11 via the buffer based on the detected reproduction position. Output to the digital signal processing unit 9. In step 405, the digital signal processing unit 9 decodes the encoded data of the left channel L and the right channel R from the recording medium 11.

From this state, at step 406, the state of the reproduction channel switch 132 is determined. If the reproduction channel switch 132 is not OFF, the process proceeds to step 407, and it is determined whether the reproduction channel switch 132 has been switched to the left channel LCH. If the reproduction channel changeover switch 132 has been switched to the left channel LCH, in step 408, the decoded audio data of the right channel R is all 0, that is, no sound data,
Is the D / A converter 13
Is output to

Thus, in step 409, the audio data input to the D / A converter 13 is converted into an analog signal, and unnecessary frequency components are cut by the low-pass filter 15 to reduce quantization noise, and the amplifier The signal is output to the speaker 19 and the external output terminal 20 via the terminal 17.

On the other hand, if the reproduction channel changeover switch 132 has been switched to the right channel RCH in step 407, all the decoded audio data of the left channel L is set to 0, that is, silence data in step 410.
Only decoded audio data of right channel R is D / A
The speaker 19 and the external output terminal 20 are output to the converter 14,
Is output to

Thereafter, at step 411, a stop button STO
The state of P is determined, and if it has been operated, the process is terminated,
If not, the process returns to step 403, and the same operation as described above is repeated.

In such a reproduction mode, when the state of the reproduction channel switch 132 in step 406 is determined, the reproduction channel switch 132 is turned off.
If it is FF, the process immediately proceeds to step 409, where the audio data of the left and right channels LR decoded by the digital signal processing unit 9 is output to the D / A converters 13 and 14, and the low-pass filters 15 and 16 and the amplifier 17, 1
8 to a speaker 19 and an external output terminal 20.

With this arrangement, if the reproduction channel switch 132 is switched to the left channel LCH for the audio data recorded separately on the left channel L and the right channel R, the left channel L If only the decoded audio data is switched to the right channel RCH, only the decoded audio data of the right channel R can be reproduced.
Set the playback channel selector switch 132 to the left channel L
By switching to the CH and the right channel RCH, the listener and the speaker can be separately reproduced, for example, only the voice of the listener and only the voice of the speaker. As a result, for example, when it is used for recording of an interview and the like and only the voice of the speaker is to be reproduced, it is possible to selectively reproduce only the voice of the speaker. it can.

Further, when the voice data recorded by such a voice recording / reproducing apparatus is recognized by, for example, a voice recognition apparatus, the acoustic model is not an unspecified speaker model for recognizing the voice of an unspecified speaker. Optimum usage for a specific speaker model that recognizes the speaker's voice can be achieved. That is, since the specific speaker model generally has a higher recognition rate than the unspecified speaker model, for example, in an interview, the voice of the listener to be interviewed on the left channel L and the voice of the speaker interviewed on the right channel R are recorded. Then, the voices of only the listener and the speaker are recorded on each channel. For example, if the voice data of the right channel R is input to the voice recognition device and the voice recognition is set so that the voice data of only the speaker can be recognized. From the recognition result of, documenting can be easily performed.

Further, since the silent data area can be quickly skipped by the reproduction position correction processing, only the recorded audio data can be efficiently reproduced. In the embodiment described above, the recording channel switch 131 and the reproduction channel switch 1
Although 32 are provided respectively, these may be shared by one. Further, instead of the changeover switches 131 and 132, an angle sensor or the like which can perform three kinds of switching of the left channel LCH, the right channel RCH and OFF depending on the inclination angle can be used.

FIG. 6 shows a usage form of a voice recording / reproducing apparatus for switching channels using an angle sensor. FIG. 6B shows a state in which a voice of a listener is recorded on a left channel L. (B) is a state in which the voice of the speaker is recorded on the right channel R.

The audio recording / reproducing apparatus is capable of automatically switching the recording channel depending on the tilt angle. If the recording mode is set and the recording channel switch 131 is not turned off, the audio recording / reproducing apparatus is set to a predetermined mode. The sound is recorded on the left channel L when tilted by −α degrees in the direction, and the sound is recorded on the right channel R when tilted by α degrees in the predetermined direction.

A listener holding such a voice recording / reproducing apparatus, when recording his own (listener) voice,
The audio recording / reproducing apparatus is tilted at a predetermined angle by -α degrees. As a result, the listener's voice is recorded on the left channel L. When recording the voice of the speaker, the voice recording / reproducing device is tilted by α degrees in a predetermined direction. As a result, the speaker's voice is recorded on the right channel R.

According to such an audio recording / reproducing apparatus, the listener can perform a normal interview operation, that is, the microphone of the audio recording / reproducing apparatus for a normal interview operation, that is, for generating a sound, without being particularly conscious of channel switching during recording. The natural action of pointing to is that the listener and speaker's voice are recorded on separate channels.

Further, by using the fast-forward button FF and the fast-return button REW, for example, by operating the fast-forward button FF twice, based on the start position information of the audio data next to the currently reproduced audio data, Can be moved to the head position of the current audio data, and by operating the fast-return button REW twice, the head position of the current audio data is moved based on the start position information of the audio data currently being reproduced. You can also.

[0040]

As described above, according to the present invention, a plurality of input voices can be separately recorded in different channel areas of a recording medium, and the voice data of each channel can be reproduced separately. For example, even when it is used for recording an interview or the like and it is desired to reproduce only the voice of the speaker, the usable range can be expanded in many directions, for example, only the voice of the speaker can be selectively reproduced. In addition, since the silent data area can be skipped quickly, the recorded audio data can be efficiently reproduced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing a schematic configuration of a first embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart for explaining a recording operation according to the first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a view showing the concept of an audio file used in the first embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart for explaining a reproduction operation according to the first embodiment;

FIG. 5 is a flowchart for explaining a second embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a view for explaining still another embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1.2 Microphone 3.4 Amplifier 5.6 Low-pass filter 7.8 A / D converter 9 Digital signal processing unit 10 System control unit 11 Recording medium 12 Operation buttons REC Recording button PLAY Reproduction Button STOP Stop button FF Fast-forward button REW Fast-return button 130 Channel switching means 131 Recording channel switch 132 Channel playback switch 13.14 D / A converter 15.16 Low-pass filter 17.18 ... Amplifier 19 ... Speaker 20 ... External output terminal

Claims (2)

[Claims] An audio input unit for inputting a plurality of audios; a recording channel switching unit for switching and setting a recording channel of audio data input from the audio input unit; a recording medium having a plurality of channel areas; Audio recording means for recording audio data in a channel area of the recording medium corresponding to the recording channel set by the recording channel switching means; reproduction channel switching means for switching and setting a reproduction channel in the channel area of the recording means; An audio recording / reproducing apparatus comprising: audio reproducing means for reproducing audio data in a channel area of the recording medium corresponding to the reproduction channel set by the reproduction channel switching means. 2. The sound reproducing means has a judging means for judging the presence or absence of sound data in a channel area of the recording medium corresponding to the reproducing channel set by the reproducing channel switching means. 2. The audio recording / reproducing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the data is determined, a reproduction position having audio data following the silent data is located.