EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing 
Volume 2005 (2005), Issue 9, Pages 1305-1322
doi:10.1155/ASP.2005.1305

Parametric Coding of Stereo Audio

Jeroen Breebaart,1 Steven van de Par,1 Armin Kohlrausch,1,2 and Erik Schuijers3

 1Digital Signal Processing Group, Philips Research Laboratories, Eindhoven 5656 AA, The Netherlands
2Department of Technology Management, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven 5656 AA, The Netherlands
3Philips Digital Systems Laboratories, Eindhoven 5616 LW, The Netherlands
Received 27 January 2004; Revised 22 July 2004

Abstract

Parametric-stereo coding is a technique to efficiently code a stereo audio signal as a monaural signal plus a small amount of parametric overhead to describe the stereo image. The stereo properties are analyzed, encoded, and reinstated in a decoder according to spatial psychoacoustical principles. The monaural signal can be encoded using any (conventional) audio coder. Experiments show that the parameterized description of spatial properties enables a highly efficient, high-quality stereo audio representation.