Audio feedback patent

The US Patent & Trademark Office today published Apple's patent application titled 'Techniques for presenting sound effects on a portable media player.' The new technology, which relates to sound effects on a portable media device, is intended to provide audio feedback during portable media player usage to enhance the user experience. "The lack of auditory feedback degrades the user experience and renders the media player less user friendly," wrote Apple. "Thus, there is a need for improved techniques to facilitate auditory feedback on portable media players." One particularly interesting line in the patent description reads "the advantage of having more than one mixer channel is that multiple sound effects can be output concurrently, thereby providing a polyphony audio effect." Polyphony effects generally relate to ringtones, which could suggest audio feedback for the company's forthcoming iPhone. Apple also filed a continuation patent for 'evaluating and correcting rhythm in audio data' in August. [updated]

by MacNN Staff