A mobile telephone device (10) comprises a microphone (20) and one or more spaced audio sensors (12) to sense the position and/or voice characteristics of one or more individual speakers (16). A mute control means (14) employs sound phase, and/or sound time of arrival, and/or sound loudness to create a map of the positions of individual speakers (16). The mute control means (14) identifies individual speaker (16) voice characteristics using one, the other or both of audio signal analysis of the sound of individual speaker's voices; and use of voice CODEC analysis results for each individual speaker. A call may involve no sound muting, may involve sound muting except for one individual speaker (16), or sound muting except for any one of a plurality of accepted individual speakers. A default individual speaker position immediately before and closest the microphone is provided. Positional tolerance for individual speakers of at least 5% to 10% is employed.