ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 4 -- United States Patent no. 12,322,366, issued on June 3, was assigned to YAMAHA Corp. (Hamamatsu, Japan).

"Masking sound adjustment method and masking sound adjustment device" was invented by Shinichi Kato (Hamamatsu, Japan).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A masking sound adjustment method includes obtaining, in each of a plurality of frequency bands, a volume adjustment amount of a masking sound with respect to a volume of a conversation sound to be masked, based on a threshold value corresponding to a target word intelligibility of the conversation sound to be masked; and adjusting a volume of the masking sound in each of the plurality of frequency bands based on the ...