Removing time delays in signal paths

• US 20070094013A1
• 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 7,742,913 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 a downmix signal in a time domain and spatial information in a frequency domain;

converting the downmix signal in the time domain to a downmix signal in the frequency domain; and

combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information,

wherein 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, further comprising:

delaying the spatial information by at least one of an encoding delay and a decoding delay.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the frequency domain includes a Quadrature Mirror Filter Domain (QMF) domain.

4. The method of claim 3, wherein a total of delay time of the spatial information is 961 time samples.

5. The method of claim 3 or claim 4, further comprising:

generating a plural-channel signal using the combined downmix signal and spatial information; and

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

6. The method of claim 5, wherein the time-series data includes at least one of a moving picture, a still image and text.

13. The computer-readable medium of claim 11 or claim 12, further comprising:

generating a plural-channel signal using the combined downmix signal and spatial information; and

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

14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein the time-series data includes at least one of a moving picture, a still image and text.

7. An apparatus for decoding an audio signal, comprising:

a first decoder configured for decoding an encoded downmix signal to provide a decoded downmix signal in one of at least two downmix input domains; and

a second decoder operatively coupled to the first decoder and configured for generating a plural-channel audio signal by combining the received downmix signal with spatial information,

wherein the second decoder compensates for a time synchronization difference between the decoded downmix signal and the spatial information.

8. The apparatus of claim 7, further comprising:

a delay processor included in the second decoder and configured for compensating for the time synchronization difference between the decoded downmix signal and the spatial information, the delay processor including at least one of a signal delay processor leading or lagging the decoded downmix signal by the time synchronization difference and a spatial information delay processor leading or lagging the spatial information by the time synchronization difference.

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

receiving a downmix signal in a time domain and spatial information in a frequency domain;

converting the downmix signal in the time domain to a downmix signal in the frequency domain;

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

combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information.

10. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, further comprising:

delaying the spatial information by at least one of an encoding delay and a decoding delay.

11. The computer-readable medium of claim 9, wherein the frequency domain includes a Quadrature Mirror Filter Domain (QMF) domain.

12. The computer-readable medium of claim 11, wherein a total of delay time of the spatial information is 961 time samples.

15. A system for processing an audio signal, comprising:

means for receiving a downmix signal in a time domain and spatial information in a frequency domain;

means for converting the downmix signal in the time domain to a downmix signal in the frequency domain;

means for compensating at least one of the converted downmix signal and spatial information for a time delay resulting from the converting; and

means for combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information.

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

receiving a downmix signal in a time domain and spatial information in a frequency domain;

converting the downmix signal in the time domain to a downmix signal in the frequency domain;

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

combining the converted downmix signal and the spatial information.