Patent ID: RE44897

Claim:
A method for coding an audio signal digitized at a low sampling rate to obtain time domain audio samples, to generate a coded audio signal, comprising the following steps: producing a frequency domain representation of the time domain audio samples, the frequency domain representation including a total number of successive frequency lines; subdividing the total number of successive frequency lines into a plurality of scale factor bands each scale factor band having a number of successive frequency lines wherein a scale factor is assigned to each scale factor band, the assigned scale factor being used for coding the frequency lines in the respective scale factor band; forming a plurality of regions, each region including a plurality of successive scale factor bands wherein the scale factors assigned to the plurality of scale factor bands in a region are each coded with the same number of bits, which is determined according to the largest scale factor of the region, and wherein a region including the scale factor bands having frequency lines that correspond to the higher frequency range frequency lines among the frequency lines in all regions is the highest region; setting to a value of zero the scale factors that are assigned to the scale factor bands in at least the highest region to obtain zero-valued scale factors, the value of zero corresponding to a multiplication factor of 1; coding the frequency lines of at least the highest region with the zero-valued scale factors; and not coding the zero-valued scale factors of the highest region ; and decoding said coded audio signal .