Abstract: In a method of providing a virtual product to third parties, the virtual product being present in an original version in a digital form having a predetermined quality, a reduced version of the virtual product, along with information relating to a distributor of the virtual product, is initially provided. The reduced version's quality is inferior to the quality of the original version, and the information relating to the distributor are associated with this reduced version. On the basis of the information associated with the reduced version, further information may be created. This further information indicates that the reduced version has been passed on to the third party by the content provider. The further information is created if the third party has acquired rights to the virtual product after having obtained the reduced version of same.

Abstract: An inventive loudspeaker includes a diaphragm, a first excitation means for generating structure-borne sound in the diaphragm, and a second excitation means, different from the first one, for setting the diaphragm into a longitudinal vibrational motion in a direction perpendicular to the extension of the diaphragm. In accordance with the invention, the problem of insufficient bass reproduction and/or of the magnitude conflicting with invisible integration or installation is solved in that a second exciter system is introduced, which uniformly moves the diaphragm, or the plate serving as the diaphragm, forward and backward in addition to the bending waves of the structure-borne sound. The sound reproduction therefore is possible across the entire audio-frequency range without impeding the goal of invisible integration or installation.

Abstract: A time-discrete audio signal is processed to provide a quantization block with quantized spectral values. Furthermore, an integer spectral representation is generated from the time-discrete audio signal using an integer transform algorithm. The quantization block having been generated using a psychoacoustic model is inversely quantized and rounded to then form a difference between the integer spectral values and the inversely quantized rounded spectral values. The quantization block alone provides a lossy psychoacoustically coded/decoded audio signal after the decoding, whereas the quantization block, together with the combination block, provides a lossless or almost lossless coded and again decoded audio signal in the decoding. By generating the differential signal in the frequency domain, a simpler coder/decoder structure results.

Abstract: In a method and a device for labeling a virtual product when distributing it to third parties, the virtual product being in a digital form, and the labeling indicating which rights a third party having received the virtual product has acquired in relation to same, the virtual product is initially provided by a distributor in the form of a file. Subsequently, electronic documentation for the virtual product provided is created, which has information regarding the distributor of the virtual product associated with it. Then the electronic documentation thus produced is associated with the file, which is then distributed to a third party. If the third party wishes to acquire rights to the file received, the necessary transactions are performed using the information associated with the electronic documentation so as to distribute a predetermined right to the third party from the distributor of the virtual product.

Abstract: In order to obtain an integer transform, which provides integer output values, the TDAC function of a MDCT is explicitly carried out in the time domain before the forward transform. In overlapping windows, this results in a Givens rotation which may be represented by lifting matrices, wherein time-discrete sampled values of an audio signal may at first be summed up on a pair-wise basis to build a vector so as to be sequentially provided with a lifting matrix. In accordance with the invention, after each multiplication of a vector by a lifting matrix, a rounding step is carried out such that, on the output-side, only integers will result. By transforming the windowed integer sampled value with an integer transform, a spectral representation with integer spectral values may be obtained. The inverse mapping with an inverse rotation matrix and corresponding inverse lifting matrices results in an exact reconstruction.

Abstract: An apparatus for scalable encoding a spectrum of a signal including audio and/or video information, with the spectrum comprising binary spectral values, includes a means (102) for generating a first sub-scaling layer and a second sub-scaling layer in addition to a means (106) for forming the encoded signal, with the means (106) for forming being implemented so as to include the first sub-scaling layer and the second sub-scaling layer into the encoded signal that the first and the second sub-scaling layer are separately decodable from each other. In contrast to a full-scaling layer, a sub-scaling layer includes only the bits of a certain order of a part of the binary spectral values in the band, so that, by additionally decoding a sub-scaling layer, a more finely controllable and a more finely scalable precision gain may be achieved.

Abstract: In determining a coding block raster on which a decoded signal is based, a segment of the decoded signal is picked out first, said segment beginning at a certain output sampling value of the decoded signal. Said segment is then converted into a spectral representation, whereupon said spectral representation is then evaluated in relation to a predetermined criterion in order to obtain an evaluation result for the segment. This procedure is repeated for a plurality of different segments beginning at different output sampling values each, in order to obtain a plurality of evaluation results. Finally, the plurality of the evaluation results is searched in order to establish the evaluation result that has an extreme value as compared to the other evaluation results, in such a way that it can be assumed that the segment to which this evaluation result is allocated matches the coding block raster on which the decoded signal is based.

Abstract: In determining a coding block raster on which a decoded signal is based, a segment of the decoded signal is picked out first (11), said segment beginning at a certain output sampling value of the decoded signal. Said segment is then converted into a spectral representation (12), whereupon said spectral representation is then evaluated in relation to a predetermined criterion (13) in order to obtain an evaluation result for the segment. This procedure is repeated for a plurality of different segments beginning at different output sampling values each, in order to obtain a plurality of evaluation results. Finally, the plurality of the evaluation results is searched (14) in order to establish the evaluation result that has an extreme value as compared to the other evaluation results, in such a way that it can be assumed that the segment to which this evaluation result is allocated matches the coding block raster on which the decoded signal is based.

Abstract: In a method for assessing the quality of an audio test signal derived from an audio reference signal by coding and decoding, the audio test signal is compared with the audio reference signal, as it were, behind the cochlea of the human ear. All masking effects as well as the transmission function of the ear are equally applied to the audio reference signal and the audio test signal. To this end, the audio test signal is broken down according to its spectral composition by means of a first bank of filters consisting of filters overlapping in frequency and defining spectral regions, said filters having differing filtering functions each determined on the basis of the excitation curve of the human ear with respect to the respective filter center frequency. The audio reference signal is also broken down according to its spectral composition into partial audio reference signals by means of a second bank of filters coinciding with the first bank of filters.

Abstract: A digital encoding process for transmitting and/or storing acoustical sigs and, in particular, music signals, in which scanned values of the acoustical signal are transformed by means of a transformation or a filter bank into a sequence of second scanned values, which reproduce the spectral composition of the acoustical signal, and the sequence of second scanned values is quantized in accordance with the requirements with varying precision and is partially or entirely encoded by an optimum encoder, and in which a corresponding decoding and inverse transformation takes place during the reproduction. An encoder is utilized in a manner in which the occurrence probability of the quantized spectral coefficient is correlated to the length of the code in such a way that the more frequently the spectral coefficient occurs, the shorter the code word.

Abstract: A process for simultaneous transmission of signals from N signal sources via a corresponding number of transmission channels, in which the individual signals are divided into blocks and the blocks are transformed into spectral coefficients by transformation or filtering, the spectral coefficients undergoing a data reduction process. The blocks belonging to the individual signals are divided into sections. The respective current sections of all signals are processed simultaneously. The permissible interference for each section is determined utilizing a perception-specific model, and a request of currently required overall transmission capacity is calculated. The allotment of maximum transmission capacity at disposal for each individual signal is calculated from the overall transmission capacity at disposal and the currently required overall transmission capacity. Each signal is coded and transmitted with the thus determined capacity.