Audio encoder for encoding a multichannel signal and audio decoder for decoding an encoded audio signal

• US 10,388,287 B2
• Filed: 09/05/2017
• Issued: 08/20/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/09/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Angewandten Forsching E.V.
• Original Assignee: Fraunhofer Gesellschaft Zur Foerderung Der Angewandten Forsching E.V.
• Inventors: Disch, Sascha, Fuchs, Guillaume, Ravelli, Emmanuel, Neukam, Christian, Schmidt, Konstantin, Benndorf, Conrad, Niedermeier, Andreas, Schubert, Benjamin, Geiger, Ralf
• Primary Examiner(s): Albertalli, Brian L
• Application Number:
  US15/695,668
• Publication Number:
  US 20170365264A1
• Time in Patent Office: 714 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/008 Multichannel audio signal coding or decoding using interchannel correlation to reduce redundancy, e.g. joint-stereo, intensity-coding or matrixing
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/02 using spectral analysis, e.g. transform vocoders or subband vocoders
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/032 Quantisation or dequantisation of spectral components
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/04 using predictive techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/08 Determination or coding of the excitation function; Determination or coding of the long-term prediction parameters
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/13 Residual excited linear prediction [RELP]
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/18 Vocoders using multiple modes
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 21/038 using band spreading techniques

Abstract

Audio encoder for encoding a multichannel signal is shown. The audio encoder includes a downmixer for downmixing the multichannel signal to obtain a downmix signal, a linear prediction domain core encoder for encoding the downmix signal, wherein the downmix signal has a low band and a high band, wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder is configured to apply a bandwidth extension processing for parametrically encoding the high band, a filterbank for generating a spectral representation of the multichannel signal, and a joint multichannel encoder configured to process the spectral representation including the low band and the high band of the multichannel signal to generate multichannel information.

Claims

1. An audio encoder for encoding a multichannel signal, comprising:

a downmixer for downmixing the multichannel signal to acquire a downmix signal,

a linear prediction domain core encoder for encoding the downmix signal, wherein the downmix signal comprises a low band and a high band, wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder is configured to apply a bandwidth extension processing for parametrically encoding the high band;

a filterbank for generating a spectral representation of the multichannel signal; and

a joint multichannel encoder configured to process the spectral representation comprising the low band and the high band of the multichannel signal to generate multichannel information.

2. The audio encoder according to claim 1,

wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder further comprises a linear prediction domain decoder for decoding the encoded downmix signal to acquire an encoded and decoded downmix signal;

and

wherein the audio encoder further comprises a multichannel residual coder for calculating an encoded multichannel residual signal using the encoded and decoded downmix signal, the multichannel residual signal representing an error between a decoded multichannel representation using the multichannel information and the multichannel signal before downmixing.

3. The audio encoder of claim 1,

wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder is configured to apply a bandwidth extension processing for parametrically encoding the high band,

wherein the linear prediction domain decoder is configured to acquire, as the encoded and decoded downmix signal, only a low band signal representing the low band of the downmix signal, and wherein the encoded multichannel residual signal comprises only a band corresponding to the low band of the multichannel signal before downmixing.

4. The audio encoder according to claim 1, wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder comprises an ACELP processor, wherein the ACELP processor is configured to operate on a downsampled downmix signal and wherein a time domain bandwidth extension processor is configured to parametrically encode a band of a portion of the downmix signal removed from the ACELP input signal by a third downsampling.

5. The audio encoder according to claim 1, wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder comprises a TCX processor wherein the TCX processor is configured to operate on the downmix signal not downsampled or downsampled by a degree smaller than the downsampling for the ACELP processor, the TCX processor comprising a first time-frequency converter, a first parameter generator for generating a parametric representation of a first set of bands and a first quantizer encoder for generating a set of quantized encoded spectral lines for a second set of bands.

6. The audio encoder according to claim 5, wherein the time-frequency converter is different from the filterbank, wherein the filterbank comprises filter parameters optimized to generate a spectral representation of the multichannel signal, or wherein the time-frequency converter comprises filter parameters optimized to generate a parametric representation of a first set of bands.

7. The audio encoder according to claim 1, wherein the multichannel encoder comprises a first frame generator and wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder comprises a second frame generator, wherein the first and the second frame generators are configured to form a frame from the multichannel signal, wherein the first and the second frame generators are configured to form a frame of a similar length.

8. The audio encoder according to claim 1, the audio encoder further comprising:

a linear prediction domain encoder comprising the linear prediction domain core encoder and the multichannel encoder;

a frequency domain encoder; and

a controller for switching between the linear prediction domain encoder and the frequency domain encoder,

wherein the frequency domain encoder comprises a second joint multichannel encoder for encoding second multichannel information from the multichannel signal, wherein the second joint multichannel encoder is different from the first joint multichannel encoder, and

wherein the controller is configured such that a portion of the multichannel signal is represented either by an encoded frame of the linear prediction domain encoder or by an encoded frame of the frequency domain encoder.

9. The audio encoder according to claim 1,

wherein the linear prediction domain core encoder is configured to calculate the downmix signal as a parametric representation of a mid signal of an M/S multichannel audio signal;

wherein the multichannel residual coder is configured to calculate a side signal corresponding to the mid signal of the M/S multichannel audio signal, wherein the multichannel residual coder is configured to calculate a high band of the mid signal using simulating time domain bandwidth extension or wherein the multichannel residual coder is configured to predict the high band of the mid signal using finding a prediction information that minimizes a difference between a calculated side signal and a calculated full band mid signal from the previous frame.

10. An audio decoder for decoding an encoded audio signal comprising a core encoded signal, bandwidth extension parameters, and multichannel information, the audio decoder comprising:

a linear prediction domain core decoder for decoding the core encoded signal to generate a mono signal;

an analysis filterbank to convert the mono signal into a spectral representation;

a multichannel decoder for generating a first channel spectrum and a second channel spectrum from the spectral representation of the mono signal and the multichannel information; and

a synthesis filterbank processor for synthesis filtering the first channel spectrum to acquire a first channel signal and for synthesis filtering the second channel spectrum to acquire a second channel signal.

11. The audio decoder according to claim 10, comprising:

wherein the linear prediction domain core decoder comprises a bandwidth extension processor for generating a high band portion from the bandwidth extension parameters and the lowband mono signal or the core encoded signal to acquire a decoded high band of the audio signal;

wherein the linear prediction domain core decoder further comprises a low band signal processor configured to decode the low band mono signal;

wherein the linear prediction domain core decoder further comprises a configured to calculate a full band mono signal using the decoded low band mono signal and the decoded high band of the audio signal.

12. The audio decoder of claim 10, wherein the linear prediction domain decoder comprises:

an ACELP decoder, a low band synthesizer, an upsampler, a time domain bandwidth extension processor or a second combiner, wherein the second combiner is configured for combining an upsampled low band signal and a bandwidth-extended high band signal to acquire a full band ACELP decoded mono signal;

a TCX decoder and an intelligent gap filling processor to acquire a full band TCX decoded mono signal;

a full band synthesis processor for combining the full band ACELP decoded mono signal and the full band TCX decoded mono signal, or

wherein a cross-path is provided for initializing the low band synthesizer using information derived by a low band spectrum-time conversion from the TCX decoder and the IGF processor.

13. The audio decoder of claim 10, further comprising:

a frequency domain decoder;

a second joint multichannel decoder for generating a second multichannel representation using an output of the frequency domain decoder and a second multichannel information; and

a first combiner for combining the first channel signal and the second channel signal with the second multichannel representation to acquire a decoded audio signal;

wherein the second joint multichannel decoder is different from the multichannel decoder.

14. The audio decoder of claim 10, wherein the analysis filterbank comprises a DFT to convert the mono signal into a spectral representation and wherein the synthesis filterbank processor comprises an IDFT to convert the spectral representation into the first and the second channel signals.

15. The audio decoder of claim 14, wherein the analysis filterbank is configured to apply a window on the DFT-converted spectral representation such that a right portion of the spectral representation of a previous frame and a left portion of the spectral representation of a current frame are overlapping, wherein the previous frame and the current frame are consecutive.

16. The audio decoder of claim 10,

wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to acquire the first and the second channel signals from the mono signal, wherein the mono signal is a mid signal of a multichannel signal and wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to acquire a M/S multichannel decoded audio signal, wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to calculate the side signal from the multichannel information.

17. The audio decoder of claim 16,

wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to calculate a L/R multichannel decoded audio signal from the M/S multichannel decoded audio signal,

wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to calculate the L/R multichannel decoded audio signal for a low band using the multichannel information and the side signal;

or

wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to calculate a predicted side signal from the mid signal and wherein the multichannel decoder is further configured to calculate the L/R multichannel decoded audio signal for a high band using the predicted side signal and an ILD value of the multichannel information.

18. The audio decoder of claim 16,

wherein the multichannel decoder is further configured to perform a complex operation on the L/R decoded multichannel audio signal;

wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to calculate a magnitude of the complex operation using an energy of the encoded mid signal and an energy of the decoded L/R multichannel audio signal to acquire an energy compensation; and

wherein the multichannel decoder is configured to calculate a phase of the complex operation using an IPD value of the multichannel information.

19. A method for encoding a multichannel signal, the method comprising:

downmixing the multichannel signal to acquire a downmix signal,

encoding the downmix signal, wherein the downmix signal comprises a low band and a high band, wherein the encoding comprises applying a bandwidth extension processing for parametrically encoding the high band;

generating a spectral representation of the multichannel signal; and

processing the spectral representation comprising the low band and the high band of the multichannel signal to generate multichannel information.

20. A method of decoding an encoded audio signal, comprising a core encoded signal, bandwidth extension parameters, and multichannel information, the method comprising

decoding the core encoded signal to generate a mono signal;

converting the mono signal into a spectral representation;

generating a first channel spectrum and a second channel spectrum from the spectral representation of the mono signal and the multichannel information; and

synthesis filtering the first channel spectrum to acquire a first channel signal and synthesis filtering the second channel spectrum to acquire a second channel signal.

21. A non-transitory digital storage medium having a computer program stored thereon to perform the method for encoding a multichannel signal, the method comprising:

downmixing the multichannel signal to acquire a downmix signal,

encoding the downmix signal, wherein the downmix signal comprises a low band and a high band, the encoding comprises applying a bandwidth extension processing for parametrically encoding the high band;

generating a spectral representation of the multichannel signal; and

processing the spectral representation comprising the low band and the high band of the multichannel signal to generate multichannel information,

when said computer program is run by a computer.

22. A non-transitory digital storage medium having a computer program stored thereon to perform the method of decoding an encoded audio signal, comprising a core encoded signal, bandwidth extension parameters, and multichannel information, the method comprising

decoding the core encoded signal to generate a mono signal;

converting the mono signal into a spectral representation;

generating a first channel spectrum and a second channel spectrum from the spectral representation of the mono signal and the multichannel information; and

synthesis filtering the first channel spectrum to acquire a first channel signal and synthesis filtering the second channel spectrum to acquire a second channel signal,

when said computer program is run by a computer.