Generating and distributing multi channel audio and subsequent generation of audio tracks including at least some of the audio channels

摘要

A data format, method and system are disclosed for encoding multi-channel audio. The data format includes a header and a plurality of blocks, each block corresponding to a unique portion in time of said multi-channel audio and encoding audio data from the respective channels for the unique portion in time. The header includes data defining an absolute channel number to each channel in the multi-channel audio and each block includes data mapping the absolute channel number to the encoded data.