Patent ID: 8244524

Claim:
An encoding apparatus for dividing an input signal into frames that are formed from samples and creating high-frequency-component encoded data by encoding a high frequency band in the input signal, the encoding apparatus comprising: a dividing unit that converts the input signal into a frequency-domain spectrum signal and divides the frequency-domain spectrum signal into an arbitrary number of segments with respect to a time axis and a frequency axis; a threshold calculating unit that calculates a spectrum power of each of the segments and calculates a masking threshold using the calculated spectrum power of each segment; and a power correcting unit that detects a segment having the spectrum power equal to or less than the calculated masking threshold and corrects the spectrum power of the detected segment by calculating a correction amount using the spectrum power of a segment that is adjacent to the detected segment to correct the spectrum power of the detected segment and then adding the calculated correction amount to the spectrum power of the detected segment.