Two-stage bit allocation algorithm for stereo audio coder

Author

Jean, F.-R. ; Long, C.-F. ; Hwang, T.-H. ; Wang, H.-C.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Nat. Taipei Inst. of Technol., Taiwan

Volume

143

Issue

5

fYear

1996

fDate

10/1/1996 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

331

Lastpage

336

Abstract

A new bit allocation algorithm is proposed and applied in a stereo transform coder. This algorithm is a two-stage approach based on the minimisation of perceptual distortion measured by artificial ears. At the first stage, the use of minimum frequency-weighted reconstruction error is exploited, in which the weighting factors are related to the masking threshold and the absolute hearing threshold. The bit assignment obtained at the first stage is fine tuned by a greedy algorithm of perceptual distortion versus bit rate at the second stage. A joint stereo perceptual transform coder is implemented and incorporated with this two-stage bit allocation algorithm. The listening tests show that this coder performs better than MPEG layer 2 at bit rates below 128 kbps and has the comparative quality of MPEC layer 2 at higher bit rates

Keywords

Hi-Fi equipment; acoustic variables measurement; audio coding; hearing; transform coding; 128 kbit/s; MPEG layer 2; absolute hearing threshold; artificial ears; bit allocation algorithm; bit rate; greedy algorithm; listening tests; masking threshold; minimum frequency-weighted reconstruction error; perceptual distortion; perceptual distortion measurement; stereo audio coder; stereo perceptual transform coder; stereo transform coder; subband based coder; two-stage bit allocation algorithm; weighting factors;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Vision, Image and Signal Processing, IEE Proceedings -

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1350-245X

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/ip-vis:19960759

Filename

555585