Methods and apparatus for information encoding and decoding based upon tonal components of plural channels

摘要

A signal encoding method and apparatus by which a high encoding efficiency may be achieved by encoding tonal components of plural channels by exploiting channel-to-channel characteristics. The encoding of separately encoding first signals of plural channels is selectively changed over to the encoding of encoding the first signals of plural channels in common or vice versa depending on the results of detection of characteristics of the first signals of plural channels. The compression ratio may be improved if the first signals are encoded in common, while ill effects due to encoding in common may be avoided by separately encoding the first signals of plural channels.