METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ENCODING LEFT AND RIGHT CHANNELS OF A STEREO SOUND SIGNAL SELECTING BETWEEN TWO AND FOUR SUB-FRAMES MODELS DEPENDING ON THE BIT BUDGET

• US 20180233154A1
• Filed: 09/22/2016
• Published: 08/16/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 09/25/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: VoiceAge Corporation
• Original Assignee: VoiceAge Corporation
• Inventors: Vaillancourt, Tommy, Jelinek, Milan
• Granted Patent: US 10,319,385 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/002 Dynamic bit allocation for perceptual audio coders G10L19/032
• 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 19/032 Quantisation or dequantisation of spectral components
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/06 Determination or coding of the spectral characteristics, e.g. of the short-term prediction coefficients
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/09 Long term prediction, i.e. removing periodical redundancies, e.g. by using adaptive codebook or pitch predictor
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/24 Variable rate codecs, e.g. for generating different qualities using a scalable representation such as hierarchical encoding or layered encoding
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/03 characterised by the type of extracted parameters
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/21 the extracted parameters being power information
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 25/51 for comparison or discrimination
• CPC Class Codes: H04S 1/007 in which the audio signals are in digital form data reduction aspects thereof based on psychoacoustics G10L19/02
• CPC Class Codes: H04S 2400/01 Multi-channel, i.e. more than two input channels, sound reproduction with two speakers wherein the multi-channel information is substantially preserved
• CPC Class Codes: H04S 2400/03 Aspects of down-mixing multi-channel audio to configurations with lower numbers of playback channels, e.g. 7.1 -> 5.1 H04S2400/01 takes precedence

Abstract

A stereo sound encoding method and system, for encoding left and right channels of a stereo sound signal, down mix the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce primary and secondary channels and encode the primary and secondary channels. Encoding the primary channel and encoding the secondary channel comprise determining a first bit budget to encode the primary channel and a second bit budget to encode the secondary channel. If the second bit budget is sufficient, the secondary channel is encoded using a four subframes model and, if the second bit budget is insufficient for using the four subframes model, the secondary channel is encoded using a two subframes model.

Claims

1. A stereo sound encoding method for encoding left and right channels of a stereo sound signal, comprising:

down mixing the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce primary and secondary channels;

encoding the primary channel and encoding the secondary channel, wherein encoding the primary channel and encoding the secondary channel comprise determining a first bit budget to encode the primary channel and a second bit budget to encode the secondary channel;

wherein;

if the second bit budget is sufficient, the secondary channel is encoded using a four sub-frames model; and

if the second bit budget is insufficient for using the four sub-frames model, the secondary channel is encoded using a two sub-frames model.

2. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein down mixing the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal comprises time domain down mixing the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce the primary and secondary channels.

3. The method as defined in claim 1, wherein encoding the primary channel comprises producing primary channel coding parameters, and encoding the secondary channel comprises producing secondary channel coding parameters, and wherein said method comprises:

determining a bit budget required to encode, in a current frame, secondary channel coding parameters including (a) LP filter coefficients and/or (b) pitch information, and gains, that are not re-used from the primary channel encoding; and

determining if a remaining bit budget allows to quantize, in the current frame, four algebraic codebooks or only two algebraic codebooks.

4. The method as defined in claim 3, comprising:

doubling a sub-frame length when the two sub-frames model is used; and

interpolating the LP filter coefficients of the primary channel, when re-used, to adapt said primary channel LP filter coefficients by taking into account the two sub-frames model.

5. The method as defined in claim 1, comprising selecting between time domain down mixing and frequency domain down mixing.

6. The method as defined in claim 1, comprising:

converting the left and right channels from time domain to frequency domain; and

frequency domain down mixing the frequency domain left and right channels to produce frequency domain primary and secondary channels.

7. The method as defined in claim 6, comprising:

converting the frequency domain primary and secondary channels back to time domain for encoding by a time domain encoder.

17. A processor-readable memory comprising non-transitory instructions that, when executed, cause a processor to implement the operations of the method as recited in claim 1.

8. A stereo sound encoding system for encoding left and right channels of a stereo sound signal, comprising:

at least one processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor and comprising non-transitory instructions that when executed cause the processor to implement;

a down mixer of the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce primary and secondary channels;

an encoder of the primary channel and an encoder of the secondary channel;

a bit allocation estimator of a first bit budget to encode the primary channel and a second bit budget to encode the secondary channel; and

a decision module to select, if the second bit budget is sufficient, encoding of the secondary channel using a four sub-frames model, and, if the second bit budget is insufficient for using the four sub-frames model, encoding of the secondary channel using a two sub-frames model.

9. The system as defined in claim 8, wherein the down mixer is a time domain down mixer of the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce the primary and secondary channels.

10. The system as defined in claim 8, wherein the primary channel encoder produces primary channel coding parameters, and wherein the secondary channel encoder:

produces secondary channel coding parameters;

determines a bit budget required to encode, in a current frame, secondary channel coding parameters including (a) LP filter coefficients and/or (b) pitch information, and gains, that are not re-used from the primary channel encoding; and

determines if a remaining bit budget allows to quantize, in the current frame, four algebraic codebooks or only two algebraic codebooks.

11. The system as defined in claim 10, wherein the secondary channel encoder:

doubles a sub-frame length when the two sub-frames model is used; and

interpolates the LP filter coefficients of the primary channel, when re-used, to adapt said primary channel LP filter coefficients by taking into account the two sub-frames model.

12. The system as defined in claim 8, wherein the down channel mixer selects between time domain down mixing and frequency domain down mixing.

13. The system as defined in claim 8, comprising:

a converter of the left and right channels from time domain to frequency domain;

wherein the down channel mixer mixes the frequency domain left and right channels to produce frequency domain primary and secondary channels.

14. The system as defined in claim 13, comprising:

a converter of the frequency domain primary and secondary channels back to time domain for encoding by a time domain encoder.

15. A stereo sound encoding system for encoding left and right channels of a stereo sound signal, comprising:

a down mixer of the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce primary and secondary channels;

an encoder of the primary channel and an encoder of the secondary channel;

a bit allocation estimator of a first bit budget to encode the primary channel and a second bit budget to encode the secondary channel; and

a decision module to select, if the second bit budget is sufficient, encoding of the secondary channel using a four sub-frames model, and, if the second bit budget is insufficient for using the four sub-frames model, encoding of the secondary channel using a two sub-frames model.

16. A stereo sound encoding system for encoding left and right channels of a stereo sound signal, comprising:

at least one processor; and

a memory coupled to the processor and comprising non-transitory instructions that when executed cause the processor to;

down mix the left and right channels of the stereo sound signal to produce primary and secondary channels;

encode the primary channel and encode the secondary channel;

estimate a first bit budget to encode the primary channel and a second bit budget to encode the secondary channel; and

select, if the second bit budget is sufficient, encoding of the secondary channel using a four sub-frames model, and, if the second bit budget is insufficient for using the four sub-frames model, encoding of the secondary channel using a two sub-frames model.