DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claim(s) 1-5, 9-17, 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koretzky U.S. PAP 2018/0122403 in view of Rand U.S. PAP 2016/0036962 A1.
Regarding claim 1 Koretzky teaches a method, comprising:
receiving by a media player, through an input user interface of the media player, a selection of a play button (The component signal fragments may be concatenated, cross-faded, and buffered for playback at a playback device, see par. [0052]);
responsive to receiving the selection of the play button, playing by the media player a musical song, wherein the musical song includes a vocal component and an instrumental component and wherein the playing by the media player of the musical song comprises playing by the media player the musical song with the vocal component at a vocal-component volume level and the instrumental component at an instrumental-component volume level (the individual component signals may correspond to individual musical instruments, voices, or other sound sources, see par. [0051];
and while playing the musical song, (a) receiving by the media player a volume adjustment input by way of an adjustment of a volume control of the input user interface of the media player (a graphical user interface is provided that allows the end user to set the gains of the separated component signals independently. This is implemented by providing a user interface with a number of volume faders., see par. [0054]),
However Koretzky does not teach and (b) responsive to receiving the volume adjustment input, adjusting by the media player a ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level.
In a similar field of endeavor Rand teaches display a user interface element that adjusts a relative volume of music compared to a volume of a voice communication; and in response to user input received via the user interface element, adjust the relative volume of the music and voice communication, see par. [0043]. Relative Volume Slider(s): the slider is a user interface element that is responsive to user input to mix VoIP and background music using simple user control. See FIG. 8b. In a first embodiment, the UI presents a single relative slider as one example of the user interface element. The second embodiment provides the “ducked volume control” which allows the user to visually set the difference between normal background audio level and the ducked level which is activated whenever voice (or another audio source) is detected. [0098] Auto Ducker: this provides a novel technique to mix VoIP and background music.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Koretzky invention with the teachings of Rand for the benefit of providing a novel technique to mix VoIP and background music, see par. [0098].
Regarding claim 2 Rand teaches the method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level comprises increasing the ratio (The alternative relative volume slider is shown in a state where the voice volume (8014) is slightly louder than the media volume (8011), see par. [0136]).
Regarding claim 3 Rand teaches the method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level comprises decreasing the ratio (t is also shown in a state where the “auto-ducking” feature is used, such that background audio will be ducked below its normal level (8010) when voice is detected, creating a larger spread between the voice and media volume during conversation, see par. [0136]).
Regarding claim 4 Koretzky teaches the method of claim 1, wherein adjusting the ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level comprising changing the ratio from a first ratio to a second ratio while continuing to play the musical song (moving each fader from minimum gain (0% volume) to maximum gain (100% volume, see par. [0054]; Rand teaches creating a larger spread between the voice and media volume during conversation, see par. [0136]).
Regarding claim 5 Koretzky teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising using a trained neural network to decompose the musical song into at least the vocal component and the instrumental component (Specific content may include musical instruments, voices, or any other unique audio source or component, see par. [0052]).
Regarding claim 9 Koretzky teaches the method of claim 5, wherein using the trained neural network to decompose the musical song into at least the vocal component and the instrumental component is done by the media player (performing audio source separation using a deep neural network (DNN) to generate an estimated magnitude spectrogram of the component(s) of the audio source, see abstract).
Regarding claim 10 Koretzky teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the volume adjustment input is by way of sliding of a slide bar (see figure 3, GUI 300).
Regarding claim 11 Koretzky teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the input user interface of the media player is provided by way of an output display of the media player (Software system 600 includes a graphical user interface (GUI) 615, for receiving user commands and data in a graphical (e.g., “point-and-click” or “touch gesture”) fashion. These inputs, in turn, may be acted upon by the system 600 in accordance with instructions from operating system 610 and/or application(s) 602. The GUI 615 also serves to display the results of operation from the OS 610 and application(s) 602, whereupon the user may supply additional inputs or terminate the session (e.g., log off), see par. [0185]).
Regarding claim 12 Koretzky teaches the method of claim 1, wherein playing by the media player the song comprises playing by the media player the musical song by way of an output interface of the media player (The component signal fragments may be concatenated, cross-faded, and buffered for playback at a playback device, see par. [0052]).
Regarding claim 13 Koretzky teaches a media player system comprising:
an input user interface ( graphical user interface for manipulating component signals, see par. [0015]); at least one processor (computing device 500 in response to processor(s) 504 executing one or more programs , see par. [0173]);
non-transitory computer-readable storage (non-transitory medium, see par. [0175]); and instructions stored in the non-transitory computer-readable storage and executable by the at least one processor to carry out operations ( media that store data and/or software instructions that cause a computing device to operate in a specific fashion, see par. [0175]) including:
receiving by a media player, through an input user interface of the media player, a selection of a play button (The component signal fragments may be concatenated, cross-faded, and buffered for playback at a playback device, see par. [0052]);
responsive to receiving the selection of the play button, playing by the media player a musical song, wherein the musical song includes a vocal component and an instrumental component and wherein the playing by the media player of the musical song comprises playing by the media player the musical song with the vocal component at a vocal-component volume level and the instrumental component at an instrumental-component volume level (the individual component signals may correspond to individual musical instruments, voices, or other sound sources, see par. [0051];
and while playing the musical song, (a) receiving by the media player a volume adjustment input by way of an adjustment of a volume control of the input user interface of the media player (a graphical user interface is provided that allows the end user to set the gains of the separated component signals independently. This is implemented by providing a user interface with a number of volume faders., see par. [0054]),
However Koretzky does not teach and (b) responsive to receiving the volume adjustment input, adjusting by the media player a ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level.
In a similar field of endeavor Rand teaches display a user interface element that adjusts a relative volume of music compared to a volume of a voice communication; and in response to user input received via the user interface element, adjust the relative volume of the music and voice communication, see par. [0043]. Relative Volume Slider(s): the slider is a user interface element that is responsive to user input to mix VoIP and background music using simple user control. See FIG. 8b. In a first embodiment, the UI presents a single relative slider as one example of the user interface element. The second embodiment provides the “ducked volume control” which allows the user to visually set the difference between normal background audio level and the ducked level which is activated whenever voice (or another audio source) is detected. [0098] Auto Ducker: this provides a novel technique to mix VoIP and background music.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Koretzky invention with the teachings of Rand for the benefit of providing a novel technique to mix VoIP and background music, see par. [0098].
Regarding claim 14 Rand teaches the media player system of claim 13, wherein adjusting the ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level comprises increasing the ratio (The alternative relative volume slider is shown in a state where the voice volume (8014) is slightly louder than the media volume (8011), see par. [0136]).
Regarding claim 15 Rand teaches the media player system of claim 13, wherein adjusting the ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level comprises decreasing the ratio (t is also shown in a state where the “auto-ducking” feature is used, such that background audio will be ducked below its normal level (8010) when voice is detected, creating a larger spread between the voice and media volume during conversation, see par. [0136]).
Regarding claim 16 Rand teaches the media player system of claim 13, wherein adjusting the ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level comprising changing the ratio from a first ratio to a second ratio while continuing to play the musical song (creating a larger spread between the voice and media volume during conversation, see par. [0136]).
17. The media player system of claim 13, further comprising using a trained neural network to decompose the musical song into at least the vocal component and the instrumental component (Specific content may include musical instruments, voices, or any other unique audio source or component, see par. [0052]).
Regarding claim 19 Koretzky teaches the media player system of claim 13, wherein the volume adjustment input is by way of sliding of a slide bar (see figure 3, GUI 300).
Regarding claim 20 Koretzky teaches a non-transitory data storage holding instructions executable by at least one computer processor to cause a media player to carry out operations (on-transitory media that store data and/or software instructions that cause a computing device to operate in a specific fashion, see par. [0175])comprising: receiving by a media player, through an input user interface of the media player, a selection of a play button (The component signal fragments may be concatenated, cross-faded, and buffered for playback at a playback device, see par. [0052]);
responsive to receiving the selection of the play button, playing by the media player a musical song, wherein the musical song includes a vocal component and an instrumental component and wherein the playing by the media player of the musical song comprises playing by the media player the musical song with the vocal component at a vocal-component volume level and the instrumental component at an instrumental-component volume level (the individual component signals may correspond to individual musical instruments, voices, or other sound sources, see par. [0051];
and while playing the musical song, (a) receiving by the media player a volume adjustment input by way of an adjustment of a volume control of the input user interface of the media player (a graphical user interface is provided that allows the end user to set the gains of the separated component signals independently. This is implemented by providing a user interface with a number of volume faders., see par. [0054]),
However Koretzky does not teach and (b) responsive to receiving the volume adjustment input, adjusting by the media player a ratio of the vocal-component volume level to the instrumental-component volume level.
In a similar field of endeavor Rand teaches display a user interface element that adjusts a relative volume of music compared to a volume of a voice communication; and in response to user input received via the user interface element, adjust the relative volume of the music and voice communication, see par. [0043]. Relative Volume Slider(s): the slider is a user interface element that is responsive to user input to mix VoIP and background music using simple user control. See FIG. 8b. In a first embodiment, the UI presents a single relative slider as one example of the user interface element. The second embodiment provides the “ducked volume control” which allows the user to visually set the difference between normal background audio level and the ducked level which is activated whenever voice (or another audio source) is detected. [0098] Auto Ducker: this provides a novel technique to mix VoIP and background music.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Koretzky invention with the teachings of Rand for the benefit of providing a novel technique to mix VoIP and background music, see par. [0098].
Claim(s) 6-8 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koretzky U.S. PAP 2018/0122403 in view of Rand U.S. PAP 2016/0036962 A1 further in view of Stoller “wave-u-net: a multiscale neural network for end-to-end audio source separation”
Regarding claim 6 Koretzky in view of Rand does not teach the method of claim 5, wherein the trained neural network comprises a U-net neural network.
In the same field of endeavor Stoller teaches the Wave-U-Net, an adaptation of the U-Net to the one-dimensional time domain, which repeatedly resamples feature maps to compute and com bine features at different time scales. We introduce further architectural improvements, including an output layer that enforces source additivity, an upsampling technique and a context-aware prediction framework to reduce output arti facts. Experiments for singing voice separation indicate that our architecture yields a performance comparable to a state of-the-art spectrogram-based U-Net architecture, given the same data, see abstract.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Koretzky in view of Rand inventio with the teachings of Stoller for the benefit of introducing further architectural improvements, including an output layer that enforces source additivity, an upsampling technique and a context-aware prediction framework to reduce output arti facts, see abstract.
Regarding claim 7 Stoller teaches the method of claim 6, wherein using the trained neural network to decompose the musical song into at least the vocal component and the instrumental component comprises (i) converting an audio signal of the musical song into an image (power spectrogram, see figure 4), (ii) applying the U-net neural network to the image, and (iii) converting an output of the U-net neural network to an audio output representing an estimate of the vocal component or of the instrumental component (we generated a vocal source estimate for a song with the baseline model M1, and visualized an excerpt using a spectrogram in Figure 4. Since the model’s input and output are of equal length and the total output is created by concatenating predictions for non-overlapping consecutive audio segments, see section 5.2).
Regarding claim 8 Stoller teaches the method of claim 6, wherein the U-net comprises a convolution path for encoding the image, and a deconvolution path for decoding the image encoded by the convolution path (Conv1D(x,y) denotes a 1D convolution with x filters of size y. It includes zero-padding for the base architecture, and is followed by a LeakyReLU activation (except for the final one, which uses tanh), see section 3.1).
Regarding claim 18 Koretzky in view of Rand does not teach the media player system of claim 17, wherein the trained neural network comprises a U-net neural network.
In the same field of endeavor Stoller teaches the Wave-U-Net, an adaptation of the U-Net to the one-dimensional time domain, which repeatedly resamples feature maps to compute and com bine features at different time scales. We introduce further architectural improvements, including an output layer that enforces source additivity, an upsampling technique and a context-aware prediction framework to reduce output arti facts. Experiments for singing voice separation indicate that our architecture yields a performance comparable to a state of-the-art spectrogram-based U-Net architecture, given the same data, see abstract.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the Koretzky in view of Rand inventio with the teachings of Stoller for the benefit of introducing further architectural improvements, including an output layer that enforces source additivity, an upsampling technique and a context-aware prediction framework to reduce output arti facts, see abstract.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Chen ‘822 teaches in FIG. 7. In this architecture the various audio sources (e.g., the musical track and the vocal track) can be separated out by the microphone array 206 and audio separator 208 as described.
Lyren ‘666 teaches audio diarization system segments the audio, separates the music from the speech, and outputs the music segment to an audio convolver, such as executed with a digital signal processor, see par. [0138].
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Michael Ortiz-Sanchez whose telephone number is (571)270-3711. The examiner can normally be reached Monday- Friday 9AM-6PM.
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/MICHAEL ORTIZ-SANCHEZ/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2656
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