Hitachi, Ltd.

Makoto Takashima

Yoshiaki Asakawa

Hidetoshi Sekine

The object of the invention is to provide a coding/decoding method in which degradation of sound quality perceptible by the listener does not occur at an low bit rate. A shift number calculation section of a decoding device divides a frequency domain into at least two sub-bands, and approximates each of normalized transform coefficients in the sub-band whose allocated bit value is less than a predetermined threshold using a quantized value of the transform coefficient in a predetermined sub-band other than the sub-band so as to obtain information concerning the approximation, and a multiplexer multiplexes the information and another signal and transmits them. A de-multiplexer of a decoding device separates the code of information concerning the approximation, and a shift number restore section restores the information based thereon. An approximation coefficient calculation section assigns, based on the information concerning the approximation, the transform coefficient values in the predetermined sub-band to the normalized transform coefficients whose allocated bit value is less than the predetermined threshold.

Method for coding/decoding, coding/decoding device, and

An adaptive transform coding/and decoding arrangement is provided to effectively exploit different redundancies between the bands of a spectrum envelope to effect coding at a low bit rate for an audio signal. In the adaptive transform coding method, the spectrum envelope is divided into bands so that different coding methods may be applied to the spectrum envelopes of the individual bands. By applying the present invention to the adaptive transform coding of an audio signal, the spectrum envelope can be adjusted to the coding/and transmission method which is suitable for the time fluctuation in each frequency band, so that the different redundancies for the individual bands can be effectively exploited to realize a highly efficient audio signal coding/and decoding method which has its bits reduced as required for coding the spectrum envelope.

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Funabashi, Japan

Makoto Takashima