Appeal No. 1998-2577
Application No. 08/594,054
This is a decision on appeal from the final rejection of
claims 1, 3 through 14 and 16 through 26, all claims pending1
in this application.
The invention relates to processing a stored digitized
audio signal to vary the playback speed of the signal without
changing the pitch or causing any distortion. In particular,
the playback speed is varied by deleting or repeating selected
encoded blocks of the digitized audio signal.
Representative independent claim 1 is reproduced as
follows:
1. A method for varying the speed of playback of a
stored audio signal encoded as a sequence of digitised audio
data blocks using a history based encoding technique, the
audio data blocks each corresponding to a fixed time period of
the audio signal, comprising the steps of
accessing a stored set of digitised audio data blocks
processing said set of digitised audio data blocks in encoded
form by omitting or repeating complete selected digitised
audio data blocks in accordance with a desired variation in
speed, and
1The Examiner correctly notes that the copy of claim 14
included in the appendix to the brief is missing the phrase
"audio output from said decoded digitized audio data blocks."
2
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