Patent ID: 7894611

Claim:
A method of processing two-channel input audio signals to construct output audio signals, the method comprising: decomposing the two-channel input audio signals into a plurality of two-channel subband audio signals; separately in each of a plurality of subbands generating at least three generated subband audio signals by steering the two-channel subband audio signals into at least three generated signal locations; and synthesizing the output audio signals from the generated subband audio signals, wherein the steering applies differing construction rules in at least two of the plurality of subbands, wherein the two-channel subband audio signals in a first subband k are steered according to a construction rule that maintains the relationship  L k ⁡ ( t )  +  R k ⁡ ( t )  = ∑ j = 1 N ⁢ ⁢  o j , k ⁡ ( t )  , where L k (t) represents the first subband k of a left input channel, R k (t) represents the first subband k of a right input channel, o j,k (t) represents the first subband k of the j th output channel, and N is the number of output channels.