Patent ID: 8504376

Claim:
An audio decoding method comprising: extracting, by an audio decoding apparatus, a downmix signal comprising at least one object signal, and object-based side information generated when the at least one object signal is downmixed into the downmix signal from an audio signal; receiving, by the audio decoding apparatus, control information for controlling position or level of the at least one object signal; generating, by the audio decoding apparatus, a processed downmix signal based on the downmix signal, the object-based side information and the control information; generating, by the audio decoding apparatus, channel-based side information based on the object-based side information, and the control information; and generating, by the audio decoding apparatus, a multi-channel audio signal using the processed downmix signal and the channel-based side information, wherein the object-based side information comprises at least one of object level difference information, inter-object cross correlation information, downmix gain information, downmix channel level difference information, and absolute object energy information, wherein a number of channels of the processed downmix signal is equal to a number of channels of the downmix signal, wherein a number of channels of the multi-channel audio signal is larger than the number of channels of the processed downmix signal.