Patent ID: 7709722

Claim:
An audio signal processing apparatus for processing digital audio signals at each sampling cycle, the audio signal processing apparatus comprising: an audio bus on which a plurality of frames, each containing audio signals, are transferred in turn at each sampling cycle; and a plurality of nodes each of which outputs one frame assigned to the node to the audio bus at each sampling cycle, wherein the plurality of nodes include a node in operation and a node on standby for redundancy; and wherein the node in operation and the node on standby are controlled to capture the same audio signals in the same frame on the audio bus at each sampling cycle and supplied with the same control signals for controlling the operations of the nodes, such that both the node in operation and the node on standby execute the same signal processing on the input same audio signals in accordance with the supplied same control signals, respectively; both the node in operation and the node on standby are set to output the same frame to the audio bus, but only the node in operation is permitted to output the frame in which the processed audio signals are contained, and the node on standby is prohibited from outputting the frame to the audio bus; and in response to a switch instruction, the node in operation stops outputting the frame to the audio bus and turns to be on standby in a sampling cycle, and the node on standby starts to output the frame to the audio bus and turns to be in operation in the same sampling cycle.