Title of Invention	REDUCED NUMBER OF CHANNELS DECODING
Abstract	An intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal can be reconstructed highly efficient and with high fidelity, when upmix parameters for upmixing a transmitted downmix signal to the intermediate channel representation are derived that allow for an upmix using the same upmixing algorithms as within the multi-channel reconstruction. This can be achieved when a parameter re-calculator is used to derive the upmix parameters that takes into account also parameters having information on channels that are not included in the intermediate channel representation.

Title of Invention

REDUCED NUMBER OF CHANNELS DECODING

Abstract

An intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal can be reconstructed highly efficient and with high fidelity, when upmix parameters for upmixing a transmitted downmix signal to the intermediate channel representation are derived that allow for an upmix using the same upmixing algorithms as within the multi-channel reconstruction. This can be achieved when a parameter re-calculator is used to derive the upmix parameters that takes into account also parameters having information on channels that are not included in the intermediate channel representation.

Full Text	Reduced Number of Channels Decoding Field of the invention The present invention relates to decoding of audio signals and in particular to decoding of a parametric multi-channel downmix of an original multi-channel signal into a number of channels smaller than the number of channels of the original multi-channel signal. Background of the invention and prior art Recent development in audio coding has made available the ability to recreate a multi-channel representation of an audio signal based on a stereo (or mono) signal and corresponding control data. These methods differ substantially from older matrix based solutions such as Dolby Prologic, since additional control data is transmitted to control the re-creation, also referred to as upmix, of the surround channels based on the transmitted mono or stereo channels. Hence, such a parametric multi-channel audio decoder, e.g. MPEG Surround, reconstructs N channels based on M transmitted channels, where N > M, and the additional control data. The additional control data represents a significant lower data rate than transmitting all N channels, making the coding very efficient while at the same time ensuring compatibility with both M channel devices and N channel devices. These parametric surround coding methods usually comprise a parameterization of the surround signal based on IID (Inter channel Intensity Difference) and ICC (Inter Channel Coherence). These parameters describe power ratios and correlation between channel pairs in the upmix process. Further parameters also used in prior art comprise prediction parameters used to predict intermediate or output channels during the upmix procedure. Two famous examples of such multi-channel coding are BCC coding and MPEG surround. In BCC encoding, a number of audio input channels are converted to a spectral representation using a DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) based transform with overlapping windows. The resulting uniform spectrum is then divided into non-overlapping partitions. Each partition has a bandwidth proportional to the equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB). Then, spatial parameters called ICLD (Inter-Channel Level Difference) and ICTD (Inter-Channel Time Difference) are estimated for each partition. The ICLD parameter describes a level difference between two channels and the ICTD parameter describes the time difference (phase shift) between two signals of different channels. The level differences and the time differences are given for each channel with respect to a common reference channel. After the derivation of these parameters, the parameters are quantized and encoded for transmission. The individual parameters are estimated with respect to one single reference channel in BCC-coding. In other parametric surround coding systems, e.g. in MPEG surround, a tree- structured parameterization is used. This means, that the parameters are no longer estimated with respect to one single common reference channel but to different reference channels that may even be a combination of channels of the original multi-channel signal. For example, having a 5.1 channel signal, parameters may be estimated between a combination of the front channels and between a combination of the back channels. Of course, backward compatibility to already established audio-standards is highly desirable also for the parametric coding schemes. For example, having a mono-downmix signal it is desirable to also provide a possibility to create a stereo-playback signal with high fidelity. This means that a monophonic downmix signal has to be upmixed into a stereo signal, making use of the additionally transmitted parameters in the best possible way. One common problem in multi-channel coding is energy preservation in the upmix, as the human perception of the spatial position of a sound-source is dominated by the loudness of the signal, i.e. by the energy contained within the signal. Therefore, utmost care must be taken in the reproduction of the signal to attribute the right loudness to each reconstructed channel such as to avoid the introduction of artifacts strongly decreasing the perceptional quality of the reconstructed signal. As during the downmix amplitudes of signals are commonly summed up, the possibility of interference arises, being described by the correlation- or coherence parameter. When it comes to the reconstruction of a reduced number of channels (a number of channels smaller than the original number of channels of the multi-channel signal), schemes like BCC are simple to handle, since every parameter is transmitted with respect to the same single reference channel. Therefore, having knowledge on the reference channel, the most relevant level information (absolute energy measure) can easily be derived for every channel needed for the upmix. Thus, reduced number of channels can be reconstructed without the need to reconstruct the full multi-channel signal first. Thus, the energy computations for the energies of the multichannel signal is easier in BCC by using single variables rather than products of variables, but this is only a first step. When it comes to deriving energies and correlations of a reduced number of channels which should come as close as possible to partial downmixes of the original multichannel signals, the level of difficulty in MPEG Surround and BCC is comparable. In contrast thereto, a tree-based structure as MPEG surround uses a parameterization in which the relevant information for each individual channel is not contained in a single parameter. Therefore, in prior art, reconstructing reduced numbers of channels requires the reconstruction of the multi channel signal followed by a downmix into the reduced numbers of channels to not violate the energy preservation requirement. This has the obvious disadvantage of extremely high computational complexity. Summary of the invention It is the object of the present invention to provide a concept for obtaining a reduced number of channels from a parametric multichannel signal more efficiently. In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention, this object is achieved by a parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel representation of a multi- channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi- channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the intermediate channel representation, the parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator for deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the intermediate channel representation. In accordance with a second aspect of the present invention, this object is achieved by a channel reconstructor having a parameter reconstructor, comprising: a parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi- channel signal includes channels not included in the intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi- channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the intermediate channel representation, the parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator for deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the intermediate channel representation; and an upmixer for deriving the intermediate channel representation using the upmix parameters and the downmix signal. In accordance with a third aspect of the present invention, this object is achieved by a method for generating upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the intermediate channel representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the intermediate channel representation. In accordance with a fourth aspect of the present invention, this object is achieved by an audio receiver or audio player, the receiver or audio player having a parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi- channel signal includes channels not included in the intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi- channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the intermediate channel representation, the parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator for deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the intermediate channel representation. In accordance with a fifth aspect of the present invention, this object is achieved by a method of receiving or audio playing, the method having a method for generating upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the intermediate channel representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the intermediate channel representation. The present invention is based on the finding that an intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal can be reconstructed highly efficient and with high fidelity, when upmix parameters for upmixing a transmitted downmix signal to the intermediate channel representation are derived that allow for upmix using the same upmixing algorithms as within the multi-channel reconstruction. This can be achieved when a parameter re-calculator is used to derive the upmix parameters taking also into account parameters having information on channels not included in the intermediate channel representation. In one embodiment of the present invention, a decoder is capable of reconstructing a stereo output signal from a parametric downmix of a 5-channel multi-channel signal, the parametric downmix comprising a monophonic downmix signal and associated multi-channel parameters. According to the invention, the spatial parameters are combined to derive upmix parameters for the upmix of a stereo signal, wherein the combination also takes into account multi-channel parameters not associated to the left-front or the right- front channel. Hence, absolute powers for the upmixed stereo-channels can be derived and a coherence measure between the left and the right channel can be derived allowing for a high fidelity stereo reconstruction of the multi-channel signal. Moreover, an ICC parameter and a CLD parameter are derived allowing for an upmixing using already existing algorithms and implementations. Using parameters of channels not associated to the reconstructed stereo-channels allows for the preservation of the energy within the signal with higher accuracy. This is of most importance, as uncontrolled loudness variations are disturbing the quality of the playback signal most. Generally, the application of the inventive concept allows a reconstruction of a stereo upmix from a mono-downmix of a multi-channel signal without the need of an intermediate full reconstruction of the multi-channel signal, as in prior art methods. Evidently, the computational complexity on the decoder side can thus be decreased significantly. Using also multi-channel parameters associated to channels not included in the upmix (i.e. the left front and the right front channel) allows for a reconstruction that does not introduce any additional artifacts or loudness- variations but preserves the energy of the signal perfectly instead. To be more specific, the ratio of the energy between the left and the right reconstructed channel is calculated from numerous available multi-channel parameters, taking also into account multi-channel parameters not associated to the left front and the right front channel. Evidently, the loudness ratio between the left and the right reconstructed (upmixed) channel is dominant with respect to the listening quality of the reconstructed stereo signal. Without using the inventive concept a reconstruction of channels having the precisely correct energy ratio is not possible in tree-based structures discussed within this document. Therefore, implementing the inventive concept allows for a high-quality stereo-reproduction of a downmix of a multi- channel signal based on multi-channel parameters, which are not derived for a precise reproduction of a stereo signal. It should be noted, that the inventive concept may also be used when the number of reproduced channels is other than two, for example when a center-channel shall also be reconstructed with high fidelity, as it is the case in some playback environments. A more detailed review of the prior art multi-channel encoding schemes (particularly of tree-based structures) will be given within the following to outline the high benefit of the inventive concept. Brief description of the drawings Preferred embodiments of the present invention are subsequently described by referring to the enclosed drawings, wherein: Fig. 1 shows examples for tree-based parameterizations; Fig. 2 shows examples for tree-structured decoding schemes; Fig. 3 shows an example of a prior-art multi-channel encoder; Fig. 4 shows examples of prior-art decoders; Fig. 5 shows an example for prior-art stereo reconstruction of a downmix multi-channel signal; Fig. 6 shows a block diagram of an example of an inventive parameter calculator; Fig. 7 shows an example for an inventive channel reconstructor; and Fig. 8 shows an example for an inventive receiver or audio player. Detailed description of preferred embodiments The inventive concept will in the following be described mainly with respect to MPEG coding, but is as well applicable to other schemes based on parametric coding of multi-channel signals. That is the embodiments described below are merely illustrative for the principles of the present invention for reduced number of channels decoding for tree-structured multi-channel systems. It is understood that modifications and variations of the arrangements and the details described herein will be apparent to others skilled in the art. It is the intent, therefore, to be limited only by the scope of the impending patent claims and not by the specific details presented by way of description and explanation of the embodiments herein. As mentioned above, in some parametric surround coding systems, e.g. MPEG Surround, a tree-structured parameterization is used. Such a parameterization is sketched in Figs. 1 and Fig. 2. Fig. 1 shows two ways of parameterizing a standard 5.1 channel audio scenario, having a left front channel 2, a center channel 3, a right front channel 4, a left surround channel 5 and a right surround channel 6. Optionally, a low-frequency enhancement channel 7 (LFE) may also be present. Generally, the individual channels or channel pairs are characterized with respect to each other by multi-channel parameters, such as for example a correlation parameter ICC and a level parameter CLD. Possible parameterizations will be shortly explained in the following paragraph, the resulting tree-structured decoding schemes are then illustrated in Fig. 2. In the example shown in the left side of Fig. 1 (5-1-51 parameterization) , the multi-channel signal is characterized by CLD and ICC parameters describing the relation between the left surround channel 5 and the right surround channel 6, the left front channel 2 and the right front channel 4 and between the center channel 3 and the low-frequency enhancement channel 7. However, as the whole configuration shall be downmixed into one single mono channel, for a full description of the set of channels, additional parameters are required. Therefore, additional parameters (CLD1, ICC1) are used, relating a combination of the LFE-speaker 7 and the center speaker 3 to a combination of the left front channel 2 and the right front channel 4. Furthermore, one additional set of parameters (CLD0, ICC0) is required, those parameters describing a relation between the combined surround channels 5 and 6 to the rest of the channels of the multi-channel signal. In the parameterization on the right side (5-1-52 parameterization) parameters are used, relating the left front channel 2 and the left surround channel 5, the right front channel 4 and the right surround channel 6 and the center channel 3 and the low-frequency enhancement channel 7. Additional parameters (CLD1 and ICC1) describe a combination of the left channels 2 and 5 with respect to a combination of the right channels 4 and 6. A further set of parameters (CLD0 and ICC0) describes the relation of a combination of the center channel 3 and the LFE-channel 7 with respect to a combination of the remaining channels. Fig. 2 illustrates the coding concepts underlying the different parameterizations of Fig. 1. At the decoder side so called OTT (One To Two) modules are used in a tree-like structure. Every OTT module upmixes a mono-signal into two output signals. When decoding, the parameters for the OTT boxes have to be applied in the reverse order as in encoding. Therefore, in the 5-1-51 tree structure, OTT module 20, receiving the downmix signal 22 (M) is operative to use parameters CLD0 and ICC0 to derive two channels, one being a combination of the left surround channel 5 and the right surround channel 6 and the other channel being still a combination of the remaining channels of the multi- channel signal. Accordingly, OTT module 24 derives, using CLD1 and ICC1, first channel being a combined channel of the center channel 3 and the low-frequency channel 7 and a second channel being a combination of the left front channel 2 and the right front channel 4. In the same way, OTT module 26 derives the left surround channel 5 and the right surround channel 6, using CLD2 and ICC2. OTT module 27 derives the center channel 3 and the low-frequency channel 7, using CLD4 and OTT module 28 derives the left front channel 2 and the right front channel 4, using CLD3 and ICC3. Finally, a reconstruction of the full set of channels 30 is derived from a single monophonic downmix channel 22. For the 5-1-52 tree structure, the general layout of the OTT module is equivalent to the 5-1-51 tree structure. However, the single OTT modules derive different channel combinations, the channel combinations corresponding to the parameterization outlined in Fig. 1 for the 5-1-52-case. It becomes evident from Figs. 1 and 2, that the tree- structure of the different parameterizations is only a visualization for the parameterization used. It is furthermore important to note that the individual parameters are parameters describing a relation between different channels in contrast to, for example, the BCC- coding scheme, wherein similar parameters are derived with respect to one single reference channel. Therefore, in the parameterizations shown, individual channels cannot be simply derived using the parameters associated to the OTT-boxes in the visualization, but some or all of the remaining parameters have to be taken into account additionally. The tree-structure of the parameterization is only a visualization for actual signal flow or processing shown in Fig. 3, illustrating the upmix from a transmitted low number of channels is achieved by matrix multiplication. Fig. 3 shows decoding based on a received downmixed channel 40. The downmixed channel 40 is input into an upmix block 42 deriving the reconstructed multi-channel signal 44, wherein the channel composition differs between the parameterizations used. The matrix elements of the matrix used by the reconstruction block 42 are, however, directly derived from the tree-structure. The reconstruction block 42 may, for illustrative purposes only, be further decomposed into a pre-decorrelator matrix 4 6, deriving additional decorrelated signals from the transmitted channel 40. These are then input into a mix matrix 48 deriving multi-channel signals 44 by mixing the individual input channels. As shown in Fig. 4, a straightforward approach to reduce the number of reconstructed channels would be to simply "prune" the tree of the one to two boxes. Fig. 4 illustrates a possible pruning of the trees by dashed lines, the pruning omitting OTT modules at the right hand side of the tree during reconstruction, thus reducing the number of output channels. However, using prior art parameterizations of shown in Figs. 1 and 2, introduced because they offer low-bit rate coding at highest possible quality, simple pruning is not possible to obtain a stereo output representing a left side downmix and a right side downmix of the original multichannel signal properly. Fig. 5 shows a prior art approach of creating a stereo output from the signals described above, using the obvious approach of first reconstructing the multi-channel signal completely before subsequently downmixing the signal into the stereo representation using an additional downmixer 60. This has evidently several disadvantages, such as high complexity and inferior sound quality. A solution to the afore-mentioned problem of obtaining stereo output from a mono downmix and parametric surround parameters in a parameterization that does not naturally support "pruning" down to a stereo output will in the following be derived for the general case. This is followed by two specific embodiments showing the use of the inventive concept in the parameterizations described above. Thus, solutions are provided to the problem of obtaining stereo output from a mono downmix and parametric surround parameters in a parameterization that does not support "pruning" down to a stereo output. The general approach of the parameter recalculation will be outlined below. In particular, it applies to the case of computing stereo output parameters from an arbitrary number of multi-channel audio channels N. It is furthermore assumed that the audio signal is described by a subband representation, derived using a filter bank that could be real valued or complex modulated. Let all signals considered be finite vectors of subband samples corresponding to a time frequency tile defined by the spatial parameters and let the subband samples of a reconstructed multi-channel audio signal y be formed from subband samples of audio channels ml,m2,...,mM and decorrelated subband samples of audio channels d1,d2,...,dD according to a matrix upmix operation All signals are regarded as row vectors. The matrix R is of size Nx(M+D) and represents the combined effect of the matrices Ml and M2 of Figure 3 and as such the upmix block 42. A general method for achieving suitable power and correlation parameters of a downmixed version to ND channels of the original multichannel audio signal subband samples is to form the covariance matrix of the virtual downmix defined by a NDxN downmix matrixD, This covariance matrix can be computed by multiplication with complex conjugate transposed to be where the inner covariance matrix xx* is often known from the properties of decorrelators and the transmitted parameters. An important special case where this holds true is for M=1, and frequently this inner covariance matrix is then actually equal to the identity matrix of size M + D. As a consequence, for a stereo output where ND=2, the CLD and ICC parameters can be read from in the sense that Note that here and in the following, the following notation is applied. For complex vectors x,y, the complex inner product and squared norm is defined by where the star denotes complex conjugation. Subsequently, two embodiments of the present invention shall be derived for the different parameterizations (5-1- 51 and 5-1-52) shown in Figs. 1 and 2. In the embodiments of the present invention it is taught that in order to output stereo signals based on a mono downmix and corresponding MPEG surround parameters (multi-channel parameters), upmix-parameters need to be recalculated to a single set of CLD and ICC parameters that can be used for a direct upmix of a stereo signal from the mono signal. It is furthermore assumed that the processing of the individual audio channels is done frame wise, i.e. in discrete time portions. Thus, when talking about powers or energies contained within one channel, the term "power" or "energy" is to be understood as the energy or power contained within one frame of one specific channel. Generally, parameters as for example CLD and ICC are also valid for one single frame. Having a frame with k sample values αi, the energy E within the frame can for example be represented by the squared sum of the subband sample values within the frame: Channel level differences (CLD) transmitted and used for the calculation of upmix parameters for upmixing the downmix signal M into an intermediate channel representation (stereo) of the multi-channel signal are defined as follows: wherein L0 and R0 denote the power of the signals in question within the frame for which the parameter CLD shall be derived. Therefore, for the 5-1-5x case, the four CLD parameters CLDX, X = 0,1,2,3, can be used to obtain channel powers normalized by the power of the mono downmix channel m . The channel gains are defined by The final goal is to derive optimal stereo channels l0 and r0 in the sense that appropriate estimates of the normalized powers and correlation of the stereo channels (intermediate channel representation) formed by are found, wherein the center downmix weight is q = 1/√2 . Computing powers from this assumption gives the result It turns out to be most advantageous to assume that both the combined left channel / and the combined right channel rare uncorrelated with the center channel c, rather than attempting to incorporate the correlation information carried by the parameters ICC1XM, X = 0.1. The normalized powers of the stereo output channels are therefore estimated by Having derived the powers of the output channels, the desired CLD parameter can easily be computed using the definition of the CLD parameter given above. According to the inventive concept, an ICC parameter is derived to allow a stereo upmix. The correlation between the two output channels is defined by the following expression: An attractive set of simplifying assumptions is here again that the combined left channel / and the combined right channel r are uncorrelated with the center channel c , and moreover that the surround channels are uncorrelated with the front channels. These assumptions can be expressed by The resulting estimate for p depends on the two ICC parameters ICCX, X = 2,3, which describe normalized left/right correlations which can be written out as Thus, the final correlation value depends on numerous parameters of the multi-channel parameterization, allowing for the high fidelity reconstruction of the signal. The ICC parameter is finally derived using the following formula: According to the inventive concept, the power distribution between the reconstructed channels is reconstructed with high accuracy. However, a global power scaling applied to both channels may be additionally necessary, to assure for overall energy preservation. As the relative energy distribution between the channels is vital for the spatial perception of the reconstructed signal, global scaling may deteriorate the perceptual quality of the reconstructed signal. It is to be emphasized that the global scaling is only global inside a parameter defined time-frequency tile. This means that wrong scalings will affect the signal locally at the scale of parameter tiles. In other words both frequency and time depending gains will be applied which lead to both spectral colorization and time modulation artifacts. A gain adjustment factor for global scaling is necessary to assure that the stereo upmix process is preserving the power of the mono downmix channel m . However, this factor is defined by which amounts to g=1 for the 5-1-51 configuration, since Zo + RQ = Lf + Rf +C + Ls + Rs =1. As a further embodiment, the application of the inventive concept to the 5-1-52 tree-structure will be outlined within the following paragraphs. For the creation of a high-fidelity stereo signal, the two first CLD and ICC parameter sets corresponding to the top branches of the tree are relevant. The two CLD parameters CLDX for X = 0,1, are used first to obtain normalized channel powers of the combined left and right channels and the center channel where the channel gains are defined by The goal is to derive the powers and correlation of the downmix channels where the center downmix weight is q = 1/√2 . Computing powers from this assumption gives the result An advantageous assumption is here that both the ICC between the channels / and c and between channels r and c is the same as the given ICC0 between the channels l+r and c. This assumption leads to the estimates The required gain adjustment factor g is defined by: It may be noted, that the generated CLD and ICC parameters may further be quantized, to enable the use of lookup tables in the decoder for upmix matrix creation rather than performing the complex calculations. This further increases the efficiency of the upmix process. Generally, upmix is possible using already existing OTT modules. This has the advantage that the inventive concept can be easily implemented in already existing decoding scenarios. Generally, the upmix matrix can be described as follows: where and where: Therefore, having inventively derived the parameters CLD and ICC, stereo upmix of a transmitted downmix can be performed with high fidelity using standard upmix modules. In a further embodiment of the present invention, an inventive Channel reconstructor comprises a parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters and an upmixer for deriving an intermediate channel representation using the upmix parameters and a transmitted downmix signal. The inventive concept is again outlined in Fig. 6, showing an inventive parameter calculator 502, receiving numerous ICC parameters 504 and numerous CLD parameters 506. According to one embodiment of the present invention, the inventive parameter calculator 502 derives a single CLD parameter 508 and a single ICC parameter 510 for the recreation of a stereo signal, using also multi-channel parameters (ICC and CLD) having information on channels not included or related to channels of the stereo-upmix. It may be noted, that the inventive concept can easily be adapted to scenarios with an upmix comprising more than two channels. The upmix is in that sense generally defined as an intermediate channel representation of the multi-channel signal, wherein the intermediate channel representation has more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal. One common scenario is a configuration in which an additional center channel is reconstructed. The application of the inventive concept is again outlined in Fig. 7, showing an inventive parameter calculator 502 and a 1-to-2 box OTT 520. The OTT box 520 receives as input the transmitted mono signal 522, as already detailed in Fig. 6. The inventive parameter calculator 502 receives several ICC values 504 and several CLD values 506 to derive a single CLD parameter 508 and a single ICC parameter 510. The single CLD and ICC parameters 508 and 510 are input in the OTT module 520 to steer the upmix of the monophonic downmix signal 522. Thus, at the output of the OTT module 520, a stereo signal 524 can be provided as an intermediate channel representation of the multi-channel signal. Fig. 8 shows an inventive receiver or audio player 600, having an inventive audio decoder 601, a bit stream input 602, and an audio output 604. A bit stream can be input at the input 602 of the inventive receiver/audio player 600., The decoder 601 then decodes the bit stream and the decoded signal is output or played at the output 604 of the inventive receiver/audio player 600. Although the inventive concept has been outlined mainly with respect to MPEG surround coding, it is of course by no means limited to the application to the specific parametric coding scenario. Because of the high flexibility of the inventive concept, it can be easily applied to other coding schemes as well, such as for example to 7.1 or 7.2 channel configurations or BCC schemes. Although the embodiments of the present invention relating to MPEG-coding introduce some simplifying assumptions for the generation of the common CLD and ICC parameter, this is not mandatory. It is of course also possible to not introduce those simplifications. Depending on certain implementation requirements of the inventive methods, the inventive methods can be implemented in hardware or in software. The implementation can be performed using a digital storage medium, in particular a disk, DVD or a CD having electronically readable control signals stored thereon, which cooperate with a programmable computer system such that the inventive methods are performed. Generally, the present invention is, therefore, a computer program product with a program code stored on a machine readable carrier, the program code being operative for performing the inventive methods when the computer program product runs on a computer. In other words, the inventive methods are, therefore, a computer program having a program code for performing at least one of the inventive methods when the computer program runs on a computer. While the foregoing has been particularly shown and described with reference to particular embodiments thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various other changes in the form and details may be made without departing from the spirit and scope thereof. It is to be understood that various changes may be made in adapting to different embodiments without departing from the broader concepts disclosed herein and comprehended by the claims that follow. Claims as attached to IPER, clean copy 1. Parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters (508, 510) for upmixing a downmix signal (522) into a stereo representation (524) of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal (522) and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo representation (524) representing a left-side downmix and a right-side downmix (522) of the multi- channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the stereo representation (524) and wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the stereo representation (524), the parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator (502) for deriving the upmix parameters (508, 510) comprising a CLD parameter (508) and an ICC parameter (510) from the multi-channel parameters (504, 506) using the parameters having information on channels not included in the stereo representation, the CLD parameter (508) having energy information for a left and a right channel of the stereo representation and the ICC parameter (510) having information on a correlation between the left and the right channel. 2. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is adapted to use multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing signal properties of a channel or a combination of channels of the multi-channel signal with respect to another channel or another combination of channels of the multi-channel signal. 3. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 2, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to derive upmix parameters (508, 510) describing the same signal properties of the channels of the intermediate channel representation as the multi-channel parameters (504, 506). 4. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is adapted to use correlation parameters (ICC) (504) having information on a correlation and level parameters (CLD) (506) having energy information for a channel or a combination of channels of the multi-channel signal with respect to another channel or another combination of channels of a multi-channel signal. 5. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 4, adapted to use multi-channel parameters for a multi- channel signal comprising a left front (LF) (2), a left surround (LS) (5), a right front (RF) (4), a right surround (RS) (6) and a center channel (C) (3). 6. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to derive the CLD parameter (508), using: a first CLD parameter (CLD0) having energy information for a combination of the LS (5) and RS (6) channel and a combination of the remaining channels of the multi- channel signal; a second parameter (CLD1) having energy information for a combination of the LF (2) and RF (4) channel and the center channel (C) (3); a third parameter (CLD2) having energy information for the LS (5) and the RS (6) channel; and a fourth CLD parameter (CLD3) having energy information for the LF (2) and the RF (4) channel. 7. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 6, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to derive the CLD parameter according to the following formula: in which L0 and R0 are normalized powers of stereo output channels L and R (524) derived by wherein the powers of the multi-channel signals are derived from the CLD parameters as follows: 8. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to derive the ICC (510) parameter using: a first CLD parameter (CLDo) having energy information for a combination of the LS (5) and RS (6) channel and a combination of the remaining channels of the multi- channel signal: a second parameter (CLD1) having energy information for a combination of the LF (2) and RF (4) channel and the center channel (C) (3): a third parameter (CLD2) having energy information for the LS (5) and the RS (6) channel; and a fourth CLD parameter (CLD3) having energy information for the LF (2) and the RF (4) channel; a first ICC parameter (ICC2) having information on a correlation between the LS (5) and the RS (6) channel; and a second ICC parameter (ICC3) having information on a correlation between the LF (2) and the RF (4) channel. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 8, in which the ICC parameter (510) is derived according to the following formula: in which a correlation estimate p is defined as wherein 10. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in which the parameter recalculator is operative to derive the CLD parameter (508) using: a first CLD parameter CLD0 having energy information for the center channel (C) (3) and a combination of the other channels of the multi-channel signal; a second CLD parameter (CLD1) having energy information for a combination of the LF (2) and LS (5) channel and a combination of the RF (4) and RS (6) channel; an ICC parameter (ICC0) having correlation information between the center channel (C) (3) and a combination of the other channels of the multi-channel signal. 11. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 10, in which the CLD parameter (508) is derived from the following formula: in which L0 and R0 are normalized powers of stereo output channels L and R derived by 12. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to derive the ICC parameter (510) using: a first CLD parameter CLD0 having energy information for the center channel (C) (3) and a combination of the other channels of the multi-channel signal; a second CLD parameter (CLD1) having energy information for a combination of the LF (2) and LS (5) channel and a combination of the RF (4) and RS (6) channel; a first ICC parameter (ICC0) having correlation information between the center channel (C) (3) and a combination of the other channels of the multi-channel signal; and a second ICC parameter (ICC1) having correlation information between a combination of the LF (2) and the LS (5) channel and a combination of the RF (4) and RS (6) channel. 13. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 12, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to derive the ICC value using the following formula: wherein a correlation measure p is derived as 14. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to use multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing a subband representation of the multi-channel signal. 15. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to use complex valued multi-channel parameters (504, 506) . 16. Channel reconstructor having a parameter reconstructor, comprising: a parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1; and an upmixer (520) for deriving the stereo representation (524) using the upmix parameters (508, 510) and the downmix signal (522). 17. Method for generating upmix parameters (508, 510) for upmixing a downmix signal (522) into a stereo representation (524) of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo representation representing a left-side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the stereo representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters (504, 506) include information on the channels not included in the stereo representation, the method comprising: deriving the upraix parameters (508, 510) comprising a CLD parameter (508) and an ICC parameter (510) from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the stereo representation (524), the CLD parameter (508) having energy information for a left and a right channel of the stereo representation and the ICC parameter (510) having information on a correlation between the left and the right channel. 18. Audio receiver or audio player (600), the receiver or audio player having a parameter calculator (601) for deriving upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an stereo representation of a multi- channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo representation representing a left- side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi- channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the stereo representation and wherein the multi- channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the stereo representation, the parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator for deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the stereo representation, the CLD parameter having energy information for a left and a right channel of the stereo representation and the ICC parameter having information on a correlation between the left and the right channel. 19. Method of receiving or audio playing, the method having a method for generating upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an stereo representation of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo representation representing a left-side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi- channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the stereo representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the stereo representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the stereo representation, the CLD parameter having energy information for a left and a right channel of the stereo representation and the ICC parameter having information on a correlation between the left and the right channel. 20. Computer program having a program code for performing, when running on a computer, a method for generating upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an stereo representation of a multi-channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo representation representing a left-side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi- channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the stereo representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the stereo representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the stereo representation, the CLD parameter having energy information for a left and a right channel of the stereo representation and the ICC parameter having information on a correlation between the left and the right channel. 21. Computer program having a program code for performing, when running on a computer, a method for receiving or audio playing, the method having a method for generating upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an stereo representation of a multi- channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo representation representing a left- side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi- channel signal, the downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not included in the stereo representation and wherein the multi- channel parameters include information on the channels not included in the stereo representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel parameters using the parameters having information on channels not included in the stereo representation the CLD parameter having energy information for a left and a right channel of the stereo representation and the ICC parameter having information on a correlation between the left and the right channel. An intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal can be reconstructed highly efficient and with high fidelity, when upmix parameters for upmixing a transmitted downmix signal to the intermediate channel representation are derived that allow for an upmix using the same upmixing algorithms as within the multi-channel reconstruction. This can be achieved when a parameter re-calculator is used to derive the upmix parameters that takes into account also parameters having information on channels that are not included in the intermediate channel representation.

Full Text

Reduced Number of Channels Decoding
Field of the invention
The present invention relates to decoding of audio signals
and in particular to decoding of a parametric multi-channel
downmix of an original multi-channel signal into a number
of channels smaller than the number of channels of the
original multi-channel signal.
Background of the invention and prior art
Recent development in audio coding has made available the
ability to recreate a multi-channel representation of an
audio signal based on a stereo (or mono) signal and
corresponding control data. These methods differ
substantially from older matrix based solutions such as
Dolby Prologic, since additional control data is
transmitted to control the re-creation, also referred to as
upmix, of the surround channels based on the transmitted
mono or stereo channels.
Hence, such a parametric multi-channel audio decoder, e.g.
MPEG Surround, reconstructs N channels based on M
transmitted channels, where N > M, and the additional
control data. The additional control data represents a
significant lower data rate than transmitting all N
channels, making the coding very efficient while at the
same time ensuring compatibility with both M channel
devices and N channel devices.
These parametric surround coding methods usually comprise a
parameterization of the surround signal based on IID (Inter
channel Intensity Difference) and ICC (Inter Channel
Coherence). These parameters describe power ratios and

correlation between channel pairs in the upmix process.
Further parameters also used in prior art comprise
prediction parameters used to predict intermediate or
output channels during the upmix procedure.
Two famous examples of such multi-channel coding are BCC
coding and MPEG surround. In BCC encoding, a number of
audio input channels are converted to a spectral
representation using a DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform)
based transform with overlapping windows. The resulting
uniform spectrum is then divided into non-overlapping
partitions. Each partition has a bandwidth proportional to
the equivalent rectangular bandwidth (ERB). Then, spatial
parameters called ICLD (Inter-Channel Level Difference) and
ICTD (Inter-Channel Time Difference) are estimated for each
partition. The ICLD parameter describes a level difference
between two channels and the ICTD parameter describes the
time difference (phase shift) between two signals of
different channels. The level differences and the time
differences are given for each channel with respect to a
common reference channel. After the derivation of these
parameters, the parameters are quantized and encoded for
transmission.
The individual parameters are estimated with respect to one
single reference channel in BCC-coding. In other parametric
surround coding systems, e.g. in MPEG surround, a tree-
structured parameterization is used. This means, that the
parameters are no longer estimated with respect to one
single common reference channel but to different reference
channels that may even be a combination of channels of the
original multi-channel signal. For example, having a 5.1
channel signal, parameters may be estimated between a
combination of the front channels and between a combination
of the back channels.
Of course, backward compatibility to already established
audio-standards is highly desirable also for the parametric

coding schemes. For example, having a mono-downmix signal
it is desirable to also provide a possibility to create a
stereo-playback signal with high fidelity. This means that
a monophonic downmix signal has to be upmixed into a stereo
signal, making use of the additionally transmitted
parameters in the best possible way.
One common problem in multi-channel coding is energy
preservation in the upmix, as the human perception of the
spatial position of a sound-source is dominated by the
loudness of the signal, i.e. by the energy contained within
the signal. Therefore, utmost care must be taken in the
reproduction of the signal to attribute the right loudness
to each reconstructed channel such as to avoid the
introduction of artifacts strongly decreasing the
perceptional quality of the reconstructed signal. As during
the downmix amplitudes of signals are commonly summed up,
the possibility of interference arises, being described by
the correlation- or coherence parameter.
When it comes to the reconstruction of a reduced number of
channels (a number of channels smaller than the original
number of channels of the multi-channel signal), schemes
like BCC are simple to handle, since every parameter is
transmitted with respect to the same single reference
channel. Therefore, having knowledge on the reference
channel, the most relevant level information (absolute
energy measure) can easily be derived for every channel
needed for the upmix. Thus, reduced number of channels can
be reconstructed without the need to reconstruct the full
multi-channel signal first. Thus, the energy computations
for the energies of the multichannel signal is easier in
BCC by using single variables rather than products of
variables, but this is only a first step. When it comes to
deriving energies and correlations of a reduced number of
channels which should come as close as possible to partial
downmixes of the original multichannel signals, the level
of difficulty in MPEG Surround and BCC is comparable.

In contrast thereto, a tree-based structure as MPEG
surround uses a parameterization in which the relevant
information for each individual channel is not contained in
a single parameter. Therefore, in prior art, reconstructing
reduced numbers of channels requires the reconstruction of
the multi channel signal followed by a downmix into the
reduced numbers of channels to not violate the energy
preservation requirement. This has the obvious disadvantage
of extremely high computational complexity.
Summary of the invention
It is the object of the present invention to provide a
concept for obtaining a reduced number of channels from a
parametric multichannel signal more efficiently.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention,
this object is achieved by a parameter calculator for
deriving upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal
into an intermediate channel representation of a multi-
channel signal having more channels than the downmix signal
and less channels than the multi-channel signal, the
downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel
parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-
channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal includes
channels not included in the intermediate channel
representation and wherein the multi-channel parameters
include information on the channels not included in the
intermediate channel representation, the parameter
calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator for
deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel
parameters using the parameters having information on
channels not included in the intermediate channel
representation.

In accordance with a second aspect of the present
invention, this object is achieved by a channel
reconstructor having a parameter reconstructor, comprising:
a parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters for
upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel
representation of a multi-channel signal having more
channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the
multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated
thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial
properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-
channel signal includes channels not included in the
intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi-
channel parameters include information on the channels not
included in the intermediate channel representation, the
parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator
for deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel
parameters using the parameters having information on
channels not included in the intermediate channel
representation; and an upmixer for deriving the
intermediate channel representation using the upmix
parameters and the downmix signal.
In accordance with a third aspect of the present invention,
this object is achieved by a method for generating upmix
parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an
intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel
signal having more channels than the downmix signal and
less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix
signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters
describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal,
wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not
included in the intermediate channel representation and
wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on
the channels not included in the intermediate channel
representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix
parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the
parameters having information on channels not included in
the intermediate channel representation.

In accordance with a fourth aspect of the present
invention, this object is achieved by an audio receiver or
audio player, the receiver or audio player having a
parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters for
upmixing a downmix signal into an intermediate channel
representation of a multi-channel signal having more
channels than the downmix signal and less channels than the
multi-channel signal, the downmix signal having associated
thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial
properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-
channel signal includes channels not included in the
intermediate channel representation and wherein the multi-
channel parameters include information on the channels not
included in the intermediate channel representation, the
parameter calculator comprising: a parameter recalculator
for deriving the upmix parameters from the multi-channel
parameters using the parameters having information on
channels not included in the intermediate channel
representation.
In accordance with a fifth aspect of the present invention,
this object is achieved by a method of receiving or audio
playing, the method having a method for generating upmix
parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an
intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel
signal having more channels than the downmix signal and
less channels than the multi-channel signal, the downmix
signal having associated thereto multi-channel parameters
describing spatial properties of the multi-channel signal,
wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not
included in the intermediate channel representation and
wherein the multi-channel parameters include information on
the channels not included in the intermediate channel
representation, the method comprising: deriving the upmix
parameters from the multi-channel parameters using the
parameters having information on channels not included in
the intermediate channel representation.

The present invention is based on the finding that an
intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel
signal can be reconstructed highly efficient and with high
fidelity, when upmix parameters for upmixing a transmitted
downmix signal to the intermediate channel representation
are derived that allow for upmix using the same upmixing
algorithms as within the multi-channel reconstruction. This
can be achieved when a parameter re-calculator is used to
derive the upmix parameters taking also into account
parameters having information on channels not included in
the intermediate channel representation.
In one embodiment of the present invention, a decoder is
capable of reconstructing a stereo output signal from a
parametric downmix of a 5-channel multi-channel signal, the
parametric downmix comprising a monophonic downmix signal
and associated multi-channel parameters. According to the
invention, the spatial parameters are combined to derive
upmix parameters for the upmix of a stereo signal, wherein
the combination also takes into account multi-channel
parameters not associated to the left-front or the right-
front channel. Hence, absolute powers for the upmixed
stereo-channels can be derived and a coherence measure
between the left and the right channel can be derived
allowing for a high fidelity stereo reconstruction of the
multi-channel signal. Moreover, an ICC parameter and a CLD
parameter are derived allowing for an upmixing using
already existing algorithms and implementations. Using
parameters of channels not associated to the reconstructed
stereo-channels allows for the preservation of the energy
within the signal with higher accuracy. This is of most
importance, as uncontrolled loudness variations are
disturbing the quality of the playback signal most.
Generally, the application of the inventive concept allows
a reconstruction of a stereo upmix from a mono-downmix of a
multi-channel signal without the need of an intermediate

full reconstruction of the multi-channel signal, as in
prior art methods. Evidently, the computational complexity
on the decoder side can thus be decreased significantly.
Using also multi-channel parameters associated to channels
not included in the upmix (i.e. the left front and the
right front channel) allows for a reconstruction that does
not introduce any additional artifacts or loudness-
variations but preserves the energy of the signal perfectly
instead. To be more specific, the ratio of the energy
between the left and the right reconstructed channel is
calculated from numerous available multi-channel
parameters, taking also into account multi-channel
parameters not associated to the left front and the right
front channel. Evidently, the loudness ratio between the
left and the right reconstructed (upmixed) channel is
dominant with respect to the listening quality of the
reconstructed stereo signal. Without using the inventive
concept a reconstruction of channels having the precisely
correct energy ratio is not possible in tree-based
structures discussed within this document.
Therefore, implementing the inventive concept allows for a
high-quality stereo-reproduction of a downmix of a multi-
channel signal based on multi-channel parameters, which are
not derived for a precise reproduction of a stereo signal.
It should be noted, that the inventive concept may also be
used when the number of reproduced channels is other than
two, for example when a center-channel shall also be
reconstructed with high fidelity, as it is the case in some
playback environments.
A more detailed review of the prior art multi-channel
encoding schemes (particularly of tree-based structures)
will be given within the following to outline the high
benefit of the inventive concept.

Brief description of the drawings
Preferred embodiments of the present invention are
subsequently described by referring to the enclosed
drawings, wherein:
Fig. 1 shows examples for tree-based parameterizations;
Fig. 2 shows examples for tree-structured decoding
schemes;
Fig. 3 shows an example of a prior-art multi-channel
encoder;
Fig. 4 shows examples of prior-art decoders;
Fig. 5 shows an example for prior-art stereo
reconstruction of a downmix multi-channel signal;
Fig. 6 shows a block diagram of an example of an inventive
parameter calculator;
Fig. 7 shows an example for an inventive channel
reconstructor; and
Fig. 8 shows an example for an inventive receiver or audio
player.
Detailed description of preferred embodiments
The inventive concept will in the following be described
mainly with respect to MPEG coding, but is as well
applicable to other schemes based on parametric coding of
multi-channel signals. That is the embodiments described
below are merely illustrative for the principles of the
present invention for reduced number of channels decoding
for tree-structured multi-channel systems. It is

understood that modifications and variations of the
arrangements and the details described herein will be
apparent to others skilled in the art. It is the intent,
therefore, to be limited only by the scope of the
impending patent claims and not by the specific details
presented by way of description and explanation of the
embodiments herein.
As mentioned above, in some parametric surround coding
systems, e.g. MPEG Surround, a tree-structured
parameterization is used. Such a parameterization is
sketched in Figs. 1 and Fig. 2.
Fig. 1 shows two ways of parameterizing a standard 5.1
channel audio scenario, having a left front channel 2, a
center channel 3, a right front channel 4, a left surround
channel 5 and a right surround channel 6. Optionally, a
low-frequency enhancement channel 7 (LFE) may also be
present.
Generally, the individual channels or channel pairs are
characterized with respect to each other by multi-channel
parameters, such as for example a correlation parameter ICC
and a level parameter CLD. Possible parameterizations will
be shortly explained in the following paragraph, the
resulting tree-structured decoding schemes are then
illustrated in Fig. 2.
In the example shown in the left side of Fig. 1 (5-1-51
parameterization) , the multi-channel signal is
characterized by CLD and ICC parameters describing the
relation between the left surround channel 5 and the right
surround channel 6, the left front channel 2 and the right
front channel 4 and between the center channel 3 and the
low-frequency enhancement channel 7. However, as the whole
configuration shall be downmixed into one single mono
channel, for a full description of the set of channels,
additional parameters are required. Therefore, additional

parameters (CLD1, ICC1) are used, relating a combination of
the LFE-speaker 7 and the center speaker 3 to a combination
of the left front channel 2 and the right front channel 4.
Furthermore, one additional set of parameters (CLD0, ICC0)
is required, those parameters describing a relation between
the combined surround channels 5 and 6 to the rest of the
channels of the multi-channel signal.
In the parameterization on the right side (5-1-52
parameterization) parameters are used, relating the left
front channel 2 and the left surround channel 5, the right
front channel 4 and the right surround channel 6 and the
center channel 3 and the low-frequency enhancement channel
7. Additional parameters (CLD1 and ICC1) describe a
combination of the left channels 2 and 5 with respect to a
combination of the right channels 4 and 6. A further set of
parameters (CLD0 and ICC0) describes the relation of a
combination of the center channel 3 and the LFE-channel 7
with respect to a combination of the remaining channels.
Fig. 2 illustrates the coding concepts underlying the
different parameterizations of Fig. 1. At the decoder side
so called OTT (One To Two) modules are used in a tree-like
structure. Every OTT module upmixes a mono-signal into two
output signals. When decoding, the parameters for the OTT
boxes have to be applied in the reverse order as in
encoding. Therefore, in the 5-1-51 tree structure, OTT
module 20, receiving the downmix signal 22 (M) is operative
to use parameters CLD0 and ICC0 to derive two channels, one
being a combination of the left surround channel 5 and the
right surround channel 6 and the other channel being still
a combination of the remaining channels of the multi-
channel signal.
Accordingly, OTT module 24 derives, using CLD1 and ICC1,
first channel being a combined channel of the center
channel 3 and the low-frequency channel 7 and a second
channel being a combination of the left front channel 2 and

the right front channel 4. In the same way, OTT module 26
derives the left surround channel 5 and the right surround
channel 6, using CLD2 and ICC2. OTT module 27 derives the
center channel 3 and the low-frequency channel 7, using
CLD4 and OTT module 28 derives the left front channel 2 and
the right front channel 4, using CLD3 and ICC3. Finally, a
reconstruction of the full set of channels 30 is derived
from a single monophonic downmix channel 22. For the 5-1-52
tree structure, the general layout of the OTT module is
equivalent to the 5-1-51 tree structure. However, the
single OTT modules derive different channel combinations,
the channel combinations corresponding to the
parameterization outlined in Fig. 1 for the 5-1-52-case.
It becomes evident from Figs. 1 and 2, that the tree-
structure of the different parameterizations is only a
visualization for the parameterization used. It is
furthermore important to note that the individual
parameters are parameters describing a relation between
different channels in contrast to, for example, the BCC-
coding scheme, wherein similar parameters are derived with
respect to one single reference channel.
Therefore, in the parameterizations shown, individual
channels cannot be simply derived using the parameters
associated to the OTT-boxes in the visualization, but some
or all of the remaining parameters have to be taken into
account additionally.
The tree-structure of the parameterization is only a
visualization for actual signal flow or processing shown in
Fig. 3, illustrating the upmix from a transmitted low
number of channels is achieved by matrix multiplication.
Fig. 3 shows decoding based on a received downmixed channel
40. The downmixed channel 40 is input into an upmix block
42 deriving the reconstructed multi-channel signal 44,
wherein the channel composition differs between the
parameterizations used. The matrix elements of the matrix

used by the reconstruction block 42 are, however, directly
derived from the tree-structure. The reconstruction block
42 may, for illustrative purposes only, be further
decomposed into a pre-decorrelator matrix 4 6, deriving
additional decorrelated signals from the transmitted
channel 40. These are then input into a mix matrix 48
deriving multi-channel signals 44 by mixing the individual
input channels.
As shown in Fig. 4, a straightforward approach to reduce
the number of reconstructed channels would be to simply
"prune" the tree of the one to two boxes. Fig. 4
illustrates a possible pruning of the trees by dashed
lines, the pruning omitting OTT modules at the right hand
side of the tree during reconstruction, thus reducing the
number of output channels. However, using prior art
parameterizations of shown in Figs. 1 and 2, introduced
because they offer low-bit rate coding at highest possible
quality, simple pruning is not possible to obtain a stereo
output representing a left side downmix and a right side
downmix of the original multichannel signal properly. Fig.
5 shows a prior art approach of creating a stereo output
from the signals described above, using the obvious
approach of first reconstructing the multi-channel signal
completely before subsequently downmixing the signal into
the stereo representation using an additional downmixer 60.
This has evidently several disadvantages, such as high
complexity and inferior sound quality.
A solution to the afore-mentioned problem of obtaining
stereo output from a mono downmix and parametric surround
parameters in a parameterization that does not naturally
support "pruning" down to a stereo output will in the
following be derived for the general case. This is followed
by two specific embodiments showing the use of the
inventive concept in the parameterizations described above.
Thus, solutions are provided to the problem of obtaining
stereo output from a mono downmix and parametric surround

parameters in a parameterization that does not support
"pruning" down to a stereo output.
The general approach of the parameter recalculation will be
outlined below. In particular, it applies to the case of
computing stereo output parameters from an arbitrary number
of multi-channel audio channels N. It is furthermore
assumed that the audio signal is described by a subband
representation, derived using a filter bank that could be
real valued or complex modulated.
Let all signals considered be finite vectors of subband
samples corresponding to a time frequency tile defined by
the spatial parameters and let the subband samples of a
reconstructed multi-channel audio signal y be formed from
subband samples of audio channels ml,m2,...,mM and decorrelated
subband samples of audio channels d1,d2,...,dD according to a
matrix upmix operation

All signals are regarded as row vectors. The matrix R is
of size Nx(M+D) and represents the combined effect of the
matrices Ml and M2 of Figure 3 and as such the upmix block
42. A general method for achieving suitable power and
correlation parameters of a downmixed version to ND channels
of the original multichannel audio signal subband samples
is to form the covariance matrix of the virtual downmix
defined by a NDxN downmix matrixD,

This covariance matrix can be computed by multiplication
with complex conjugate transposed to be

where the inner covariance matrix xx* is often known from
the properties of decorrelators and the transmitted
parameters.
An important special case where this holds true is for
M=1, and frequently this inner covariance matrix is then
actually equal to the identity matrix of size M + D. As a
consequence, for a stereo output where ND=2, the CLD and
ICC parameters can be read from

in the sense that

Note that here and in the following, the following
notation is applied. For complex vectors x,y, the complex
inner product and squared norm is defined by

where the star denotes complex conjugation.

Subsequently, two embodiments of the present invention
shall be derived for the different parameterizations (5-1-
51 and 5-1-52) shown in Figs. 1 and 2. In the embodiments
of the present invention it is taught that in order to
output stereo signals based on a mono downmix and
corresponding MPEG surround parameters (multi-channel
parameters), upmix-parameters need to be recalculated to a
single set of CLD and ICC parameters that can be used for a
direct upmix of a stereo signal from the mono signal.
It is furthermore assumed that the processing of the
individual audio channels is done frame wise, i.e. in
discrete time portions. Thus, when talking about powers or
energies contained within one channel, the term "power" or
"energy" is to be understood as the energy or power
contained within one frame of one specific channel.
Generally, parameters as for example CLD and ICC are also
valid for one single frame. Having a frame with k sample
values αi, the energy E within the frame can for example be
represented by the squared sum of the subband sample values
within the frame:

Channel level differences (CLD) transmitted and used for
the calculation of upmix parameters for upmixing the
downmix signal M into an intermediate channel
representation (stereo) of the multi-channel signal are
defined as follows:

wherein L0 and R0 denote the power of the signals in
question within the frame for which the parameter CLD shall
be derived.
Therefore, for the 5-1-5x case, the four CLD parameters
CLDX, X = 0,1,2,3, can be used to obtain channel powers
normalized by the power of the mono downmix channel m .

The channel gains are defined by

The final goal is to derive optimal stereo channels l0 and
r0 in the sense that appropriate estimates of the
normalized powers and correlation of the stereo channels
(intermediate channel representation) formed by

are found, wherein the center downmix weight is q = 1/√2 .
Computing powers from this assumption gives the result

It turns out to be most advantageous to assume that both
the combined left channel / and the combined right channel
rare uncorrelated with the center channel c, rather than
attempting to incorporate the correlation information
carried by the parameters ICC1XM, X = 0.1. The normalized
powers of the stereo output channels are therefore
estimated by

Having derived the powers of the output channels, the
desired CLD parameter can easily be computed using the
definition of the CLD parameter given above.
According to the inventive concept, an ICC parameter is
derived to allow a stereo upmix. The correlation between
the two output channels is defined by the following
expression:

An attractive set of simplifying assumptions is here again
that the combined left channel / and the combined right
channel r are uncorrelated with the center channel c , and
moreover that the surround channels are uncorrelated with
the front channels. These assumptions can be expressed by

The resulting estimate for p depends on the two ICC
parameters ICCX, X = 2,3, which describe normalized
left/right correlations

which can be written out as

Thus, the final correlation value depends on numerous
parameters of the multi-channel parameterization, allowing
for the high fidelity reconstruction of the signal. The ICC
parameter is finally derived using the following formula:

According to the inventive concept, the power distribution
between the reconstructed channels is reconstructed with
high accuracy. However, a global power scaling applied to
both channels may be additionally necessary, to assure for
overall energy preservation. As the relative energy
distribution between the channels is vital for the spatial
perception of the reconstructed signal, global scaling may
deteriorate the perceptual quality of the reconstructed
signal. It is to be emphasized that the global scaling is
only global inside a parameter defined time-frequency tile.
This means that wrong scalings will affect the signal
locally at the scale of parameter tiles. In other words
both frequency and time depending gains will be applied
which lead to both spectral colorization and time
modulation artifacts. A gain adjustment factor for global
scaling is necessary to assure that the stereo upmix
process is preserving the power of the mono downmix channel
m .
However, this factor is defined by which
amounts to g=1 for the 5-1-51 configuration, since
Zo + RQ = Lf + Rf +C + Ls + Rs =1.

As a further embodiment, the application of the inventive
concept to the 5-1-52 tree-structure will be outlined
within the following paragraphs. For the creation of a
high-fidelity stereo signal, the two first CLD and ICC
parameter sets corresponding to the top branches of the
tree are relevant.
The two CLD parameters CLDX for X = 0,1, are used first to
obtain normalized channel powers of the combined left and
right channels and the center channel

where the channel gains are defined by

The goal is to derive the powers and correlation of the
downmix channels

where the center downmix weight is q = 1/√2 . Computing
powers from this assumption gives the result

An advantageous assumption is here that both the ICC
between the channels / and c and between channels r and
c is the same as the given ICC0 between the channels l+r and
c. This assumption leads to the estimates

The required gain adjustment factor g is defined by:

It may be noted, that the generated CLD and ICC parameters
may further be quantized, to enable the use of lookup
tables in the decoder for upmix matrix creation rather than
performing the complex calculations. This further increases
the efficiency of the upmix process.
Generally, upmix is possible using already existing OTT
modules. This has the advantage that the inventive concept
can be easily implemented in already existing decoding
scenarios.
Generally, the upmix matrix can be described as follows:

where

and where:

Therefore, having inventively derived the parameters CLD
and ICC, stereo upmix of a transmitted downmix can be
performed with high fidelity using standard upmix modules.

In a further embodiment of the present invention, an
inventive Channel reconstructor comprises a parameter
calculator for deriving upmix parameters and an upmixer for
deriving an intermediate channel representation using the
upmix parameters and a transmitted downmix signal.
The inventive concept is again outlined in Fig. 6, showing
an inventive parameter calculator 502, receiving numerous
ICC parameters 504 and numerous CLD parameters 506.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, the
inventive parameter calculator 502 derives a single CLD
parameter 508 and a single ICC parameter 510 for the
recreation of a stereo signal, using also multi-channel
parameters (ICC and CLD) having information on channels not
included or related to channels of the stereo-upmix.
It may be noted, that the inventive concept can easily be
adapted to scenarios with an upmix comprising more than two
channels. The upmix is in that sense generally defined as
an intermediate channel representation of the multi-channel
signal, wherein the intermediate channel representation has
more channels than the downmix signal and less channels
than the multi-channel signal. One common scenario is a
configuration in which an additional center channel is
reconstructed.
The application of the inventive concept is again outlined
in Fig. 7, showing an inventive parameter calculator 502
and a 1-to-2 box OTT 520. The OTT box 520 receives as input
the transmitted mono signal 522, as already detailed in
Fig. 6. The inventive parameter calculator 502 receives
several ICC values 504 and several CLD values 506 to derive
a single CLD parameter 508 and a single ICC parameter 510.
The single CLD and ICC parameters 508 and 510 are input in
the OTT module 520 to steer the upmix of the monophonic
downmix signal 522. Thus, at the output of the OTT module

520, a stereo signal 524 can be provided as an intermediate
channel representation of the multi-channel signal.
Fig. 8 shows an inventive receiver or audio player 600,
having an inventive audio decoder 601, a bit stream
input 602, and an audio output 604.
A bit stream can be input at the input 602 of the inventive
receiver/audio player 600., The decoder 601 then decodes the
bit stream and the decoded signal is output or played at
the output 604 of the inventive receiver/audio player 600.
Although the inventive concept has been outlined mainly
with respect to MPEG surround coding, it is of course by no
means limited to the application to the specific parametric
coding scenario. Because of the high flexibility of the
inventive concept, it can be easily applied to other coding
schemes as well, such as for example to 7.1 or 7.2 channel
configurations or BCC schemes.
Although the embodiments of the present invention relating
to MPEG-coding introduce some simplifying assumptions for
the generation of the common CLD and ICC parameter, this is
not mandatory. It is of course also possible to not
introduce those simplifications.
Depending on certain implementation requirements of the
inventive methods, the inventive methods can be
implemented in hardware or in software. The implementation
can be performed using a digital storage medium, in
particular a disk, DVD or a CD having electronically
readable control signals stored thereon, which cooperate
with a programmable computer system such that the
inventive methods are performed. Generally, the present
invention is, therefore, a computer program product with a
program code stored on a machine readable carrier, the
program code being operative for performing the inventive
methods when the computer program product runs on a

computer. In other words, the inventive methods are,
therefore, a computer program having a program code for
performing at least one of the inventive methods when the
computer program runs on a computer.
While the foregoing has been particularly shown and
described with reference to particular embodiments
thereof, it will be understood by those skilled in the art
that various other changes in the form and details may be
made without departing from the spirit and scope thereof.
It is to be understood that various changes may be made in
adapting to different embodiments without departing from
the broader concepts disclosed herein and comprehended by
the claims that follow.

Claims as attached to IPER, clean copy
1. Parameter calculator for deriving upmix parameters
(508, 510) for upmixing a downmix signal (522) into a
stereo representation (524) of a multi-channel signal
having more channels than the downmix signal (522) and
less channels than the multi-channel signal, the
stereo representation (524) representing a left-side
downmix and a right-side downmix (522) of the multi-
channel signal, the downmix signal having associated
thereto multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing
spatial properties of the multi-channel signal,
wherein the multi-channel signal includes channels not
included in the stereo representation (524) and
wherein the multi-channel parameters include
information on the channels not included in the stereo
representation (524), the parameter calculator
comprising:
a parameter recalculator (502) for deriving the upmix
parameters (508, 510) comprising a CLD parameter (508)
and an ICC parameter (510) from the multi-channel
parameters (504, 506) using the parameters having
information on channels not included in the stereo
representation, the CLD parameter (508) having energy
information for a left and a right channel of the
stereo representation and the ICC parameter (510)
having information on a correlation between the left
and the right channel.
2. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is adapted to
use multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing
signal properties of a channel or a combination of
channels of the multi-channel signal with respect to
another channel or another combination of channels of
the multi-channel signal.

3. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 2, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
derive upmix parameters (508, 510) describing the same
signal properties of the channels of the intermediate
channel representation as the multi-channel parameters
(504, 506).
4. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is adapted to
use correlation parameters (ICC) (504) having
information on a correlation and level parameters
(CLD) (506) having energy information for a channel or
a combination of channels of the multi-channel signal
with respect to another channel or another combination
of channels of a multi-channel signal.
5. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 4,
adapted to use multi-channel parameters for a multi-
channel signal comprising a left front (LF) (2), a
left surround (LS) (5), a right front (RF) (4), a
right surround (RS) (6) and a center channel (C) (3).
6. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
derive the CLD parameter (508), using:
a first CLD parameter (CLD0) having energy information
for a combination of the LS (5) and RS (6) channel and
a combination of the remaining channels of the multi-
channel signal;
a second parameter (CLD1) having energy information
for a combination of the LF (2) and RF (4) channel
and the center channel (C) (3);
a third parameter (CLD2) having energy information for
the LS (5) and the RS (6) channel; and

a fourth CLD parameter (CLD3) having energy
information for the LF (2) and the RF (4) channel.
7. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 6, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
derive the CLD parameter according to the following
formula:

in which L0 and R0 are normalized powers of stereo
output channels L and R (524) derived by

wherein the powers of the multi-channel signals are
derived from the CLD parameters as follows:

8. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
derive the ICC (510) parameter using:
a first CLD parameter (CLDo) having energy information
for a combination of the LS (5) and RS (6) channel and

a combination of the remaining channels of the multi-
channel signal:
a second parameter (CLD1) having energy information
for a combination of the LF (2) and RF (4) channel and
the center channel (C) (3):
a third parameter (CLD2) having energy information for
the LS (5) and the RS (6) channel; and
a fourth CLD parameter (CLD3) having energy
information for the LF (2) and the RF (4) channel;
a first ICC parameter (ICC2) having information on a
correlation between the LS (5) and the RS (6) channel;
and
a second ICC parameter (ICC3) having information on a
correlation between the LF (2) and the RF (4) channel.
Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 8, in
which the ICC parameter (510) is derived according to
the following formula:

in which a correlation estimate p is defined as

wherein

10. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in
which the parameter recalculator is operative to
derive the CLD parameter (508) using:
a first CLD parameter CLD0 having energy information
for the center channel (C) (3) and a combination of
the other channels of the multi-channel signal;
a second CLD parameter (CLD1) having energy
information for a combination of the LF (2) and LS (5)
channel and a combination of the RF (4) and RS (6)
channel;
an ICC parameter (ICC0) having correlation information
between the center channel (C) (3) and a combination
of the other channels of the multi-channel signal.
11. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 10, in
which the CLD parameter (508) is derived from the
following formula:

in which L0 and R0 are normalized powers of stereo
output channels L and R derived by

12. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 5, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
derive the ICC parameter (510) using:
a first CLD parameter CLD0 having energy information
for the center channel (C) (3) and a combination of
the other channels of the multi-channel signal;
a second CLD parameter (CLD1) having energy
information for a combination of the LF (2) and LS (5)
channel and a combination of the RF (4) and RS (6)
channel;
a first ICC parameter (ICC0) having correlation
information between the center channel (C) (3) and a
combination of the other channels of the multi-channel
signal; and
a second ICC parameter (ICC1) having correlation
information between a combination of the LF (2) and
the LS (5) channel and a combination of the RF (4) and
RS (6) channel.
13. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 12, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
derive the ICC value using the following formula:

wherein a correlation measure p is derived as

14. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
use multi-channel parameters (504, 506) describing a
subband representation of the multi-channel signal.
15. Parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1, in
which the parameter recalculator (502) is operative to
use complex valued multi-channel parameters (504,
506) .
16. Channel reconstructor having a parameter
reconstructor, comprising:
a parameter calculator in accordance with claim 1; and
an upmixer (520) for deriving the stereo
representation (524) using the upmix parameters (508,
510) and the downmix signal (522).
17. Method for generating upmix parameters (508, 510) for
upmixing a downmix signal (522) into a stereo
representation (524) of a multi-channel signal having
more channels than the downmix signal and less
channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo
representation representing a left-side downmix and a
right-side downmix of the multi-channel signal, the
downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel
parameters (504, 506) describing spatial properties of
the multi-channel signal, wherein the multi-channel
signal includes channels not included in the stereo
representation and wherein the multi-channel
parameters (504, 506) include information on the
channels not included in the stereo representation,
the method comprising:

deriving the upraix parameters (508, 510) comprising a
CLD parameter (508) and an ICC parameter (510) from
the multi-channel parameters using the parameters
having information on channels not included in the
stereo representation (524), the CLD parameter (508)
having energy information for a left and a right
channel of the stereo representation and the ICC
parameter (510) having information on a correlation
between the left and the right channel.
18. Audio receiver or audio player (600), the receiver or
audio player having a parameter calculator (601) for
deriving upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix
signal into an stereo representation of a multi-
channel signal having more channels than the downmix
signal and less channels than the multi-channel
signal, the stereo representation representing a left-
side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi-
channel signal, the downmix signal having associated
thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial
properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the
multi-channel signal includes channels not included in
the stereo representation and wherein the multi-
channel parameters include information on the channels
not included in the stereo representation, the
parameter calculator comprising:
a parameter recalculator for deriving the upmix
parameters comprising a CLD parameter and an ICC
parameter from the multi-channel parameters using the
parameters having information on channels not included
in the stereo representation, the CLD parameter having
energy information for a left and a right channel of
the stereo representation and the ICC parameter having
information on a correlation between the left and the
right channel.

19. Method of receiving or audio playing, the method
having a method for generating upmix parameters for
upmixing a downmix signal into an stereo
representation of a multi-channel signal having more
channels than the downmix signal and less channels
than the multi-channel signal, the stereo
representation representing a left-side downmix and a
right-side downmix of the multi-channel signal, the
downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel
parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-
channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal
includes channels not included in the stereo
representation and wherein the multi-channel
parameters include information on the channels not
included in the stereo representation, the method
comprising:
deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD
parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel
parameters using the parameters having information on
channels not included in the stereo representation,
the CLD parameter having energy information for a left
and a right channel of the stereo representation and
the ICC parameter having information on a correlation
between the left and the right channel.
20. Computer program having a program code for performing,
when running on a computer, a method for generating
upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix signal into an
stereo representation of a multi-channel signal having
more channels than the downmix signal and less
channels than the multi-channel signal, the stereo
representation representing a left-side downmix and a
right-side downmix of the multi-channel signal, the
downmix signal having associated thereto multi-channel
parameters describing spatial properties of the multi-
channel signal, wherein the multi-channel signal
includes channels not included in the stereo

representation and wherein the multi-channel
parameters include information on the channels not
included in the stereo representation, the method
comprising:
deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD
parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel
parameters using the parameters having information on
channels not included in the stereo representation,
the CLD parameter having energy information for a left
and a right channel of the stereo representation and
the ICC parameter having information on a correlation
between the left and the right channel.
21. Computer program having a program code for performing,
when running on a computer, a method for receiving or
audio playing, the method having a method for
generating upmix parameters for upmixing a downmix
signal into an stereo representation of a multi-
channel signal having more channels than the downmix
signal and less channels than the multi-channel
signal, the stereo representation representing a left-
side downmix and a right-side downmix of the multi-
channel signal, the downmix signal having associated
thereto multi-channel parameters describing spatial
properties of the multi-channel signal, wherein the
multi-channel signal includes channels not included in
the stereo representation and wherein the multi-
channel parameters include information on the channels
not included in the stereo representation, the method
comprising:
deriving the upmix parameters comprising a CLD
parameter and an ICC parameter from the multi-channel
parameters using the parameters having information on
channels not included in the stereo representation the
CLD parameter having energy information for a left and
a right channel of the stereo representation and the

ICC parameter having information on a correlation
between the left and the right channel.

An intermediate channel representation of a multi-channel signal can be reconstructed highly efficient and with high fidelity, when upmix parameters for upmixing a transmitted
downmix signal to the intermediate channel representation are derived that allow for an upmix using the same upmixing algorithms as within the multi-channel reconstruction. This
can be achieved when a parameter re-calculator is used to derive the upmix parameters that takes into account also parameters having information on channels that are not included in the intermediate channel representation.

Documents:

3767-KOLNP-2008-(20-03-2014)-CLAIMS.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(20-03-2014)-CORRESPONDENCE.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(20-03-2014)-FORM-3.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(20-03-2014)-FORM-5.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(20-03-2014)-PA.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(25-05-2012)-CERTIFIED COPIES(OTHER COUNTRIES).pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(25-05-2012)-CORRESPONDENCE.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(25-05-2012)-FORM-13.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(25-05-2012)-PA-CERTIFIED COPIES.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-ABSTRACT.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-AMANDED PAGES OF SPECIFICATION.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-ANNEXURE TO FORM 3.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-CLAIMS.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-CORRESPONDENCE.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-FORM-1.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-FORM-2.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-OTHERS.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-(29-11-2013)-PETITION UNDER RULE 137.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-abstract.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-claims.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-CORRESPONDENCE 1.1.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-CORRESPONDENCE-1.2.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-correspondence.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-description (complete).pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-drawings.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-FORM 1.1.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-form 1.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-form 18.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-form 2.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-form 3.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-form 5.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-international preliminary examination report.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-international publication.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-international search report.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-OTHERS-1.1.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-others.pdf

3767-KOLNP-2008-PA.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-pct priority document notification.pdf

3767-kolnp-2008-specification.pdf

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Patent Number

263564

Indian Patent Application Number

3767/KOLNP/2008

PG Journal Number

45/2014

Publication Date

07-Nov-2014

Grant Date

31-Oct-2014

Date of Filing

15-Sep-2008

Name of Patentee

DOLBY INTERNATIONAL AB

Applicant Address

APPOLO BUILDING, 3E HERIKERBERGWEG 1-35, 1101 CN, AMSTERDAM ZUID-OOST, NETHERLANDS

Inventors:

#	Inventor's Name	Inventor's Address
1	KJOERLING, KRISTOFER	LOSTIGEN 10 170 75 SOLNA/SE
2	VILLEMOES, LARS	MANDOLINVAEGEN 22 175 56 JAERFAELLA/SE
3	BREEBAART, JEROEN	GROENEWOUDSEWEG 1 5621 BA EINDHOVEN/NL

PCT International Classification Number

G10L 19/00,H04S 3/00

PCT International Application Number

PCT/EP2006/008175

PCT International Filing date

2006-08-18

PCT Conventions:

#	PCT Application Number	Date of Convention	Priority Country
1	11/464,149	2006-08-11	Sweden
2	0600713-2	2006-03-29	Sweden
3	60/788,911	2006-04-03	Sweden