Patent ID: 9548061
Date: 2017-01-17
CPC Classifications: G10L

Claim:
1. A frame-based audio encoder comprising K different hardware processing units that implement K parallel transform units and K parallel quantization and encoding units; and a hardware microprocessor that implements a bit allocation unit and a bit reservoir and tracking unit, wherein each of the K parallel transform units is configured to transform, in parallel, a respective one of a current group of K successive frames of an audio signal into a respective one of K current sets of frequency coefficients; wherein K>1; wherein each of the K successive frames of the audio signal comprises a plurality of samples of the audio signal; wherein each of the K parallel quantization and encoding units is configured to quantize and entropy encode, in parallel, the respective one of the K current sets of frequency coefficients, under consideration of a respective number of allocated bits; wherein the bit allocation unit is configured to allocate the respective number of bits to each of the K parallel quantization and encoding units under consideration of a number of previously consumed bits; wherein the bit reservoir tracking unit is configured to update the number of previously consumed bits with a number of bits used by the K parallel quantization and encoding units for encoding the K sets of frequency coefficients of the audio signal for a group of K successive frames preceding the current group of K successive frames; wherein each of the K parallel transform units is configured to transform the respective one of the K frames into a frame-type dependent set of frequency coefficients; and further comprising: wherein the frame-type is one of a short-block type, a long-block type, a start-block type and a stop-type, wherein the short-block type indicates a block having a first number of samples, wherein the long-block type indicates a block having a second number of samples that is a multiple of the first number of samples, wherein the start-block type indicates a first transition block between the long-block type and the short-block type, and wherein the stop-type indicates a second transition block between the short-block type and the long-block type.