STEREO ENCODING APPARATUS, STEREO DECODING APPARATUS, AND THEIR METHODS

摘要

A stereo audio encoding apparatus capable of preventing degradation of the sound quality of a decoded signal, while reducing the encoding bit rate. In the apparatus, a spatial information analyzing part (101) analyzes the spatial information for each of L and R channel signals. A similarity raising part (102) corrects, based on an analysis result of the spatial information analyzing part (101), a difference between the spatial information of the L channel signal and that of the R channel signal to raise the similarity between the L and R channel signals. A channel signal encoding part (103) uses a sound source common to the two channels to encode the L and R channel signals as raised in similarity and output the resultant single encoded information. A spatial information encoding part (104) encodes the analysis result of the spatial information analyzing part (101) to output the resultant encoded information.