IMPROVED FILTER SMOOTHING IN MULTI-CHANNEL AUDIO ENCODING AND/OR DECODING

摘要

A first signal representation of one or more of the multiple channels is encoded (Sl) in a first encoding process, and a second signal representation of one or more of the multiple channels is encoded (S2) in a second, filter-based encoding process. Filter smoothing can be used to reduce the effects of coding artifacts. However, conventional filter smoothing generally leads to a rather large performance reduction and is therefore not widely used. It has been recognized that coding artifacts are perceived as more annoying than temporary reduction in stereo width, and that they are especially annoying when the coding filter provides a poor estimate of the target signal; the poorer the estimate, the more disturbing artifacts. Therefore, signal-adaptive filter smoothing (S3) is introduced in the second encoding process or a corresponding decoding process as a new general concept for solving the problems of the prior art.