Patent ID: 8032240

Claim:
A method of processing an audio signal by an encoder, the method comprising: subdividing, by the encoder, at least one channel in a frame of the audio signal into a plurality of blocks according to a subdivision hierarchy, the subdivision hierarchy having more than one level, each level being associated with a different block length, and at least two of the plurality of blocks in the at least one channel for each level being capable of different lengths; generating, by the encoder, subdivision information indicating the subdivision of the at least one channel into the plurality of blocks if the subdividing step has been performed; generating, by the encoder, channel mapping information indicating to which speaker in a reproduction device to map each channel in the audio signal; generating, by the encoder, an indicator and channel rearrangement information, the indicator indicating whether or not the channel rearrangement information is included in configuration information, the channel rearrangement information indicating a rearrangement of audio data for the at least one channel if the indicator indicates that the channel rearrangement information is included in the configuration information; generating, by the encoder, indicator information indicating whether determining of an optimum prediction order for each block is allowed; determining, by the encoder, a global prediction order if the indicator information indicates that determining of the optimum prediction order for each block is not allowed, the global prediction order being applied to all of the plurality of blocks; determining, by the encoder, the optimum prediction order for each block in the at least one channel based on a maximum permitted prediction order and a length of the block if the indicator information indicates that determining of the optimum prediction order for each block is allowed; predicting, by the encoder, current data samples in the at least one channel based on previous data samples, a number of the previous data samples used in the predicting step being the optimum prediction order; and obtaining, by the encoder, a residual of the current data samples based on the predicted data samples, wherein a length of the plurality of blocks depends on a number of levels in the subdivision hierarchy, wherein the determining the optimum prediction order step includes, determining, by the encoder, the global prediction order based on the maximum permitted prediction order; determining, by the encoder, a local prediction order based on the length of the block; and selecting, by the encoder, a minimum of the global prediction order and the local prediction order as the optimum prediction order.