Patent ID: 7813932

Claim:
An audio data encoding apparatus comprising: a scalable encoding unit, controlled by a processor, to divide audio data into a plurality of layers, to represent the audio data in predetermined numbers of bits in each of the plurality of layers, and to encode a lower layer prior to encoding an upper layer and an upper bit of each layer prior to encoding a lower bit of each layer; an SBR encoding unit to generate spectral band replication (SBR) data that has information with respect to audio data in a predetermined frequency band of frequencies between a first frequency and a second frequency among the audio data to be encoded, and to encode the SBR data; and a bitstream production unit to generate a bitstream using the encoded SBR data and the encoded audio data corresponding to a predetermined bitrate, the encoded audio data including audio data within the predetermined frequency band, wherein the second frequency is equal to or greater than a maximum frequency of the plurality of layers.