ENHANCED CONVERSATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS IN SHARED ACOUSTIC SPACE

A multichannel acoustic system (MAS) comprises an arrangement of microphones and loudspeakers and a multichannel acoustic processor (MAP) to together enhance conversational speech between two or more persons in a shared acoustic space such as an automobile. The enhancements are achieved by receiving sound signals substantially originating from relatively near sound sources; filtering the sound signals to cancel at least one echo signal detected for at least one microphone from among the plurality of microphones; filtering the sound signals received by the plurality of microphones to cancel at least one feedback signal detected for at least one microphone from among the plurality of microphones; and reproducing the filtered sound signals for each microphone from among the plurality of microphones on a subset of loudspeakers corresponding that are relatively far from the source microphone.