Patent ID: 7587254

Claim:
A warped processing module, comprising: a warped delay line, responsive to a digital signal with a pre-selected sampling frequency, configured to provide N+1 warped delay line signals W 0 , W 1 , . . . W N with a predetermined or a variable warping factor λ determining a non-linear frequency scale factor for defining a plurality of non-linearly-scaled frequency bands within a frequency range corresponding to a half of said pre-selected sampling frequency, wherein N is an integer of at least a value of one; a warped filter block, responsive to said N+1 warped delay line signals W 0 , W 1 , . . . W N , configured to provide a warped filter block output signal based on warped spectral filtering of said N+1 warped delay line signals W 0 , W 1 , . . . W N in said plurality of said non-linearly-scaled frequency bands, wherein a signal gain for each of the non-linearly-scaled frequency bands is set independently; and a dynamic range control/equalization block, responsive to said warped filter block output signal, configured to provide a dynamic range control/equalization output signal, configured to provide a dynamic range control, an equalization, or both said dynamic range control and said equalization of said digital signal based on said warped filter block output signal, wherein said warped processing module is embedded between two-channel quadrature mirror filter analysis and synthesis blocks referred to as a two-channel quadrature mirror filter bank.