Patent ID: 8095358

Claim:
A method of decoding an audio signal performed by an audio decoding apparatus, comprising; receiving, in the audio decoding apparatus, an audio signal including a downmix signal encoded according to a downmix coding scheme and a plural-channel audio coding scheme and spatial information to generate a plural-channel audio signal, and the spatial information being delayed within the audio signal; first decoding, in the audio decoding apparatus, the downmix signal according to the downmix coding scheme; second decoding, in the audio decoding apparatus, the decoded downmix signal according to the plural-channel audio coding scheme; and converting, in the audio decoding apparatus, the downmix signal of a first domain into a downmix signal of a second domain; and combining, in the audio decoding apparatus, the downmix signal of the second domain with the spatial information, wherein, before receiving the audio signal, the spatial information is delayed by an amount of time equal to a sum of a first delay time and a second delay time, the first delay time including an elapsed time of the first decoding, and the second delay time including an elapsed time of the converting.