Patent ID: 6950603

Claim:
A digital signal processing apparatus for inputting digital audio data of at least three channels, converting the digital audio signal into data blocks having a predetermined data amount each, and outputting the data blocks, the bit width per word processed on at least one channel being fixed to B, the number of channels of a signal processing system being N (where N is any integer larger than 3), the digital audio signal of at least one channel being composed of a data sequence whose bit width per word is larger than B, the apparatus comprising: input means for inputting auxiliary information containing at least bit width information and division information at intervals of a predetermined number of words of the input digital audio signal, the bit width information representing the bit width per word, the division information representing that one word is divided into a plurality of portions, said input means further comprising means for receiving at least three channels with at least one channel having the data sequence with bit width per word being larger than B; data dividing means for dividing one word of the digital audio data into at least one first division data portion having the bit width B and a second division data portion having a bit width smaller than the bit width B or dividing one word of the digital audio data into a plurality of first division data portions; channel data forming means for assigning the first division data portion to a predetermined channel of the N channels, adding predetermined bit data to the second division data portion, and assigning the resultant bit added division data portion having the bit width B to a channel other than the predetermined channel; auxiliary data adding means for adding the auxiliary data to output data of each channel of said channel data forming means at intervals of a predetermined number of words thereof; and data block forming means for converting output data of each channel of said auxiliary data adding means into data blocks having the predetermined data amount each; whereby said division information includes at least one bit indicating whether or not a current channel is paired with another channel, and a user sets or changes the number of channels (N) of audio data and bit width (B) per sample.