Efficient bit allocation algorithm for ISO/MPEG audio encoder

An efficient bit allocation algorithm for the ISO/MPEG audio layer 2 encoder is proposed. The resulting encoder is able to produce an ISO/MPEG compliant bit stream which is almost identical to the bit stream produced by the reference ISO/MPEG encoder suggested in IS 11172-3. More importantly, the number of computational steps is greatly reduced as compared to the method recommended by the ISO/MPEG Committee because the efficient bit allocation algorithm significantly reduces the number of iterations required. It was found that the efficient bit allocation algorithm works best when the bit rate demanded by the psychoacoustic model in order to keep the quantisation noise below the masking threshold is almost equal to the operational bit rate