Patent ID: 8548614

Claim:
A warped processing module, comprising: a warped delay line, responsive to a digital signal with a pre-selected sampling frequency, for providing N+1 warped delay line signals W 0 , W 1 , . . . W N with a predetermined or a variable warping factor λ determining a non-linear frequency scale factor for defining a plurality of non-linearly-scaled frequency bands within a frequency range corresponding to a half of said pre-selected sampling frequency, wherein N is an integer of at least a value of one; a warped filter block, responsive to said N+1 warped delay line signals W 0 , W 1 , . . . W N , configured to provide a warped filter block output signal based on warped spectral filtering of said N+1 warped delay line signals W 0 , W 1 , . . . W N in said plurality of said non-linearly-scaled frequency bands, wherein a signal gain for each of the non-linearly-scaled frequency bands is set independently; and a dynamic range control/equalization block, responsive to said warped filter block output signal, configured to provide a dynamic range control/equalization output signal for providing a dynamic range control, an equalization, or both, said dynamic range control and said equalization of said digital signal based on said warped filter block output signal; said warped processing module being embedded between analysis and synthesis filter blocks referred to as a filter bank; and wherein said analysis filter block is responsive to an audio input signal with a sampling frequency f s and in a frequency range from 0 to f s /2, and said analysis filter block is configured to provide said digital signal with a reduced sampling frequency f sr =f s /P which is equal to the pre-selected sampling frequency and in a low frequency branch, and to provide at least one complementary digital signal with the reduced sampling frequency f sr =f s /P and in a high frequency branch, wherein P>1.