Roku Patent Describes Creating ‘Desired Audio Effect’ to Suit Different Listeners

Home entertainment content typically includes a “default audio track” that the content creator establishes but that doesn’t “suit the listening preferences of different users,” in terms of volume and other sound parameters, said a Roku patent (10,091,581) awarded Friday at the Patent and Trademark Office. The patent, based on a July 2015 application, describes a method for creating a “desired audio effect” by causing a “plurality of speakers to play test signals, where each test signal is specific to one of the speakers.” Frequency responses of the speakers resulting from the playing of the test signals are recorded, and “one or more filters matching an audio profile selected by a user is created,” it says. “Then, the filters are applied to the recorded frequency responses to obtain filtered transformations of the speakers. The filtered transformations are applied at the speakers to thereby achieve the user audio profile.” Roku didn’t comment on the invention’s commercial applicability.