Patent ID: 7668723

Claim:
A method of encoding and authoring audio data, comprising: losslessly encoding the audio data in a sequence of analysis windows into a scalable bitstream; separating the audio data into most significant bit (MSB) and least significant (LSB) portions for each analysis window and encoded with different lossless algorithms by: assigning a minimum MSB bit width (Min MSB); computing a cost function for the audio data in the analysis window; if the cost function exceeds a threshold, computing an LSB bit width of at least one bit that satisfies the Min MSB; and if the cost function does not exceed the threshold, assigning the LSB bit width to be zero bits; comparing a buffered payload for the encoded audio data to an allowed payload for each window; and scaling the losslessly encoded audio data in the non-conforming windows so that the buffered payload for the bitstream does not exceed the allowed payload, said scaling operation introducing loss into the encoded data in those windows.