Patent ID: 8538031

Claim:
Apparatus for generating a parameter representation of a multi-channel input signal having at least three original channels, comprising: a parameter generator for generating a first balance parameter, a first coherence parameter or a first time difference parameter between a first channel pair, and for generating a second balance parameter, a second coherence parameter or a second time parameter between a second channel pair, the balance parameters, coherence parameters or time parameters forming the parameter representation, wherein the first channel pair has two channels, which are different from two channels of the second channel pair, and wherein each channel of the two channel pair is one of the original channels, a weighted or unweighted combination of the original channels, a downmix channel, or a weighted or unweighted combination of at least two downmix channels, and wherein the first channel pair and the second channel pair include information on the three original channels, wherein the parameter generator is operative to generate different sets of parameters, each set including at least two parameters, wherein channel pairs used for calculating the parameters in the different sets are different from each other, wherein the parameter generator is further operative to select one set of the different sets for output for a presently encoded signal segment, which results in a lower bit rate given a certain parameter-coding scheme, wherein the apparatus further comprises: a parameter encoder for encoding the selected set using a certain parameter coding scheme; and a parameter control information generator for generating control information indicating a characteristic of the selected parameter scheme, and wherein the control information signalling the selected parameter scheme is included into an output bitstream.