<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide improved audio coding in which perception quality of a restored signal is high. <P>SOLUTION: In summary, this application describes a psycho-acoustically motivated, parametric description of the spatial attributes of multichannel audio signals. This parametric description allows strong bit rate reductions in audio coders, since only one monaural signal has to be transmitted, combined with (quantized) parameters which describe the spatial properties of the signal. The decoder can form the original amount of audio channels by applying the spatial parameters. For near-CD-quality stereo audio, a bit rate associated with these spatial parameters of 10 k bit/s or less seems sufficient to reproduce the correct spatial impression at the receiving end. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT 
PARAMETRIC REPRESENTATION OF SPATIAL AUDIO