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

摘要

The invention provides a highly efficient technique for encoding a multi-channel audio signal. The invention relies on the basic principle of encoding a first signal representation of one or more of the multiple channels in a first encoder ( 130 ) and encoding a second signal representation of one or more of the multiple channels in a second, multi-stage, encoder ( 140 ). This procedure is significantly enhanced by providing a controller ( 150 ) for adaptively allocating a number of encoding bits among the different encoding stages of the second, multi-stage, encoder ( 140 ) in dependence on multi-channel audio signal characteristics.