Patent ID: 7761289

Claim:
A method of decoding an audio signal performed by an audio decoding apparatus, comprising: receiving, in the audio decoding apparatus, an audio signal including a downmix signal of a time domain and spatial information, the spatial information being delayed within the audio signal; first converting, in the audio decoding apparatus, the downmix signal of the time domain to a downmix signal of a real quadrature mirror filter (QMF) domain; second converting, in the audio decoding apparatus, the downmix signal of the real QMF domain to a downmix signal of a complex QMF domain; and combining, in the audio decoding apparatus, the downmix signal of the complex QMF domain with the spatial information, wherein, before receiving the audio signal, the spatial information is delayed by an amount of time including an elapsed time of the first and the second conversions of the downmix signal.