Patent ID: 7136418

Claim:
A method for encoding a signal for storage or transmission, comprising the steps of: (a) implementing a two-dimensional transform of the signal, producing a transform matrix having modulation frequency as one dimension, wherein said one dimension is a spectral representation of a time variability of a spectra of the signal; (b) reducing a dynamic range of the signal; (c) quantizing and selecting coefficients included in the transform matrix; and (d) producing data packets in which the coefficients that have been selected are encoded based upon a desired order of the coefficients, with coefficients that are more perceptually relevant being used first to fill each data packet and coefficients that are less perceptually relevant being handled in one of the following ways: (i) discarded once an available space in each data packet that is to be stored or transmitted has been filled with the coefficients that are more perceptually relevant; and (ii) disposed last within each data packet, so that the coefficients that are less perceptually relevant can subsequently be truncated from the data packet.