Abstract: A method and apparatus for decoding a bitstream (100) of transform coded multi-channel audio data. The bitstream is subjected to a block decoding process (101) to obtain for each input audio channel within the multi-channel audio data a corresponding block of frequency coefficients (102). Each block of frequency coefficients (102) is assigned a higher precision inverse transform or a lower precision inverse transform according to predetermined characteristics of the audio data represented by the block. The blocks of frequency coefficients are subsequently subjected to the assigned transform (105, 106) and an output audio signal (108) is generated in response to each of the higher and lower precision inverse transform processes.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for decoding a multi-channel audio bitstream in which adaptive frequency domain downmixer (3) is used to downmix, according to long and shorter transform block length information (17), the decoded frequency coefficients of the multi-channel audio (12,13,14,15) such that the long and shorter transform block information is maintained separately within the mixed down left and right channels. In this way, the long and shorter transform block coefficients of the mixed down let and right channels can be inverse transformed adaptively (4,5,6,7) according to the long and shorter transform block information, and the results of the inverse transform of the long and short block of each the left and right channel added together (8,9) to form the total mixed down output of the left and right channel.