Patent ID: 7921007
Filing Date: 2011-04-05
Classification: G10L

Abstract:
1. An audio encoder for encoding an audio signal (IN), the audio encoder comprising: encoder means (ENC) for encoding the audio signal (IN) into a first encoded signal part; and computation means for computing a representation of an excitation pattern of the audio signal and providing the representation of the excitation pattern as a second encoded signal part, wherein the representation of the excitation pattern comprises a representation of human auditory nerve response modeled by a filter bank of parallel auditory filters, the filters in the filter bank having values which relate to a signal level of a frequency band of a corresponding auditory filter, the excitation pattern of the audio signal thereby being a parametric spectral description of the audio signal, the computation means further for computing a representation of a masking curve based on quantized excitation parameters of the representation of the excitation pattern, and providing the representation of the masking curve to the encoder means so as to optimize encoding efficiency of the encoder means, wherein the encoder means encodes signal components of the audio signal relative to the masking curve, further wherein the second encoded signal part, included within an output bit stream of the audio encoder, along with the first signal part, provides a scalable encoded audio signal of the audio encoder.