Abstract: A perceptual audio coder is disclosed for encoding audio signals, such as speech or music, with different spectral and temporal resolutions for redundancy reduction and irrelevancy reduction. The disclosed perceptual audio coder separates the psychoacoustic model (irrelevancy reduction) from the redundancy reduction, to the extent possible. The audio signal is initially spectrally shaped using a prefilter controlled by a psychoacoustic model. The prefilter output samples are thereafter quantized and coded to minimize the mean square error (MSE) across the spectrum. The disclosed perceptual audio coder can use fixed quantizer step-sizes, since spectral shaping is performed by the pre-filter prior to quantization and coding. The disclosed pre-filter and post-filter support the appropriate frequency dependent temporal and spectral resolution for irrelevancy reduction. A filter structure based on a frequency-warping technique is used that allows filter design based on a non-linear frequency scale.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are disclosed for representing the masked threshold in a perceptual audio coder, using line spectral frequencies (LSF) or another representation for linear prediction (LP) coefficients. The present invention calculates LP coefficients for the masked threshold using known LPC analysis techniques. In one embodiment, the masked thresholds are optionally transformed to a non-linear frequency scale suitable for auditory properties. The LP coefficients are converted to line spectral frequencies or a similar representation in which they can be quantized for transmission. In one implementation, the masked threshold is transmitted only if the masked threshold is significantly different from the previous masked threshold. In between each transmitted masked threshold, the masked threshold is approximated using interpolation schemes.

Abstract: A method and apparatus are disclosed for reducing aliasing between neighboring subbands in cascaded filter banks. An alias reduction filter bank is included to reduce the aliasing components between different subbands. Generally, the magnitude response and phase of the alias reduction filter bank is similar to the magnitude response of the synthesis filter bank of the first stage filter bank. The alias reduction filter bank filters and adds the signals from a set of M2 subbands from the M1 subbands of the first stage analysis filter bank. A higher frequency resolution is obtained after the alias reduction stage by a following analysis filter bank. The signals of these subbands are first fed into an alias reduction filter bank to reduce the aliasing.