Patent ID: 7912731

Claim:
A method of encoding sound signals on a plurality of channels using a sound signal encoder, said sound signal encoder comprising a plurality of sine wave extraction units and a to-be-correlated object setter, said method comprising the steps of: (a) extracting, with the sine wave extraction units, an arbitrary number of sine waves from each of the sound signals on the plurality of channels, said arbitrary number of sine waves comprising (i) at least a first sine wave extracted from a first channel, said first sine wave having associated first-channel information, and (ii) a second sine wave extracted from a second channel, said second sine wave having associated second-channel information; and (b) setting a to-be-correlated object, said setting step comprising (i) determining, with the to-be-correlated object setter, an absolute value of a difference between frequency information included in the first-channel information and frequency information included in the second-channel information, (ii) when said difference is less than a threshold, setting, with the to-be-correlated object setter, the second-channel information as the to-be-correlated object for encoding the second-channel information and the first-channel information, and (iii) when said difference is not less than the threshold, setting, with the to-be-correlated object setter, a default value as the to-be-correlated object for encoding the second-channel information and the first-channel information.