Multiple channel audio system supporting data channel replacement

Abstract

An audio processing system which allows a surround sound system to utilize the transmission bandwidth efficiently by adaptively transmitting a supplementary data from a secondary source in addition to the audio signals of a primary source. The system consists of a transmitter component, capable of transmitting audio signals from a primary source and adaptively inserts supplementary data of the secondary source in the reserved communication bandwidth. The transmitter inserts headers in the channels used by the supplementary data to allow the receivers to identify the channel allocation between the primary source and the secondary source. Another part of the audio processing system is that of a receiver component which is capable of discriminating between data from the primary source and data from the secondary source. The primary source may comprise of audio signals from mono, stereo or surround sound music source, or voice signals such as that of a television channel while the supplementary data may comprise of advertisements, community information, public service information or even computer data.