Patent ID: 7269550

Claim:
An encoding device comprising: a time characteristic extracting unit for specifying a band of an audio input signal that is to be encoded in the time domain based on a characteristic of the audio input signal, and for outputting data indicating the specified band; a time-frequency transforming unit for transforming the audio input signal into a frequency spectrum according to a time-frequency transformation, and for outputting a first part of the frequency spectrum and a second part of the frequency spectrum, the second part of the frequency spectrum corresponding to the specified band; a time transforming unit for transforming the second part of the frequency spectrum into a time-frequency signal according to a frequency-time transformation; and an encoding unit for encoding the first part of the frequency spectrum obtained from the time-frequency transforming unit and the time-frequency signal obtained from the time transforming unit, and for generating the encoded first part of the frequency spectrum and the encoded time-frequency signal as an output signal.