Removing time delays in signal paths

• US 20070094011A1
• Filed: 09/29/2006
• Published: 04/26/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 10/24/2005
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc. (LG Corporation)
• Original Assignee: LG Electronics, Inc. (LG Corporation)
• Inventors: Pang, Hee, Jung, Yang, Kim, Dong, Lim, Jae, Oh, Hyen
• Granted Patent: US 7,653,533 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 704/204
• 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 19/167 Audio streaming, i.e. formatting and decoding of an encoded audio signal representation into a data stream for transmission or storage purposes
• CPC Class Codes: G10L 19/18 Vocoders using multiple modes
• CPC Class Codes: H04S 7/30 Control circuits for electronic adaptation of the sound field

Abstract

The disclosed embodiments include systems, methods, apparatuses, and computer-readable mediums for compensating one or more signals and/or one or more parameters for time delays in one or more signal processing paths.

Claims

1. A method of processing an audio signal, comprising:

receiving an audio signal including a downmix signal and spatial information;

converting the downmix signal from a first domain to a second domain; and

combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information,

wherein at least one of the combined downmix signal and the combined spatial information is delayed by an amount of time that includes an elapsed time of the converting.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the downmix signal or the spatial information is time delayed by at least one of an encoding delay and a decoding delay.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the converting includes at least one of a time domain to frequency domain conversion and a complexity domain conversion.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein the frequency domain is a Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF) domain.

5. The method of claim 3, wherein the complexity domain conversion includes at least one of converting a real Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF) domain signal to a complex QMF domain signal and converting a complex QMF domain signal to a real QMF domain signal.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

generating a plural-channel signal using the combined signal; and

compensating for a time synchronization difference between the plural-channel signal and time series data.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein the time series data includes at least one of a moving picture, a still image and text.

8. A system for generating a plural-channel audio signal, comprising:

a downmix decoder configured for processing an encoded downmix signal;

a plural-channel decoder operatively coupled to the downmix decoder and configured for generating a plural-channel audio signal;

a domain converter included in the plural-channel decoder and configured for converting the downmix signal from a first domain to a second domain; and

a delay processor included in the plural-channel decoder and configured for compensating the downmix signal for time delay resulting from converting the downmix signal.

9. The system of claim 8, wherein the delay processor includes at least one of a signal delay processor configured for delaying the downmix signal and a spatial information delay processor configured for delaying spatial information.

10. The system of claim 9, further comprising:

a time delay compensator configured for compensating for a time synchronization difference between the plural-channel signal and time-series data.

11. A computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon, which, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to perform the operations of:

receiving an audio signal including a downmix signal and spatial information;

converting the downmix signal from a first domain to a second domain;

compensating at least one of the converted downmix signal and the combined signal for time delay resulting from converting the downmix signal; and

combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information into a combined signal.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein the downmix signal or the spatial information is time delayed by at least one of an encoding delay and a decoding delay.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 12, wherein the converting includes at least one of a time domain to frequency domain conversion and a complexity domain conversion.

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the frequency domain is a Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF) domain.

15. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the complexity domain conversion includes at least one of converting a real Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF) domain signal to a complex QMF domain signal and converting a complex QMF domain signal to a real QMF domain signal.

16. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, further comprising:

generating a plural-channel signal using the combined signal; and

compensating for a time synchronization difference between the plural-channel signal and time-series data.

17. The computer-readable medium of claim 16, wherein the time-series data includes at least one of a moving picture, a still image and text.

18. A system for generating a plural-channel audio signal, comprising:

a domain converter configured for converting a downmix signal from a first domain to a second domain;

a delay processor operatively coupled to the domain converter and configured for compensating the converted downmix signal for time delay resulting from the conversion; and

a plural-channel audio processor operatively coupled to the delay processor and configured for generating a plural-channel audio signal from the compensated downmix signal and spatial information.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the delay processor includes at least one of a signal delay processor configured for delaying the downmix signal and a spatial information delay processor configured for delaying the spatial information.

20. The system of claim 19, further comprising:

a time delay compensator configured for compensating for a time synchronization difference between the plural-channel audio signal and time-series data.

21. A method of processing an audio signal, comprising:

receiving an audio signal including a downmix signal and spatial information;

converting the downmix signal from a first domain to a second domain;

compensating at least one of the converted downmix signal and the combined signal for time delay resulting from converting the downmix signal; and

combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information into a combined signal.