Patent ID: 8594817

Claim:
A method of processing an audio signal, comprising: receiving a downmix signal comprising plural objects and a bitstream including object information and preset information, the bitstream received from an encoding device, wherein the preset information is information for controlling a gain or panning of each of the plural objects; generating downmix processing information using the object information and the preset information; processing the downmix signal using the downmix processing information; and generating multi-channel information using the object information and the preset information, wherein the object information comprises at least one selected from the group consisting of object level information, object correlation information and object gain information, wherein the object level information is generated by normalizing an object level corresponding to an object using one of object levels, wherein the object correlation information is generated from combination of two selected objects, wherein the object gain information is for determining contributiveness of the object for a channel of each downmix signal to generate the downmix signal, wherein the preset information is extracted from the bitstream, wherein the method further includes generating blind information using the downmix signal when the bitstream does not include the object information, wherein the blind information includes blind correlation information and blind gain information, wherein the blind correlation information and blind gain information are generated by estimating a gain and a level of the plural objects, and wherein the blind correlation information indicates a correlation between two objects.