Compression of digital speech and audio signals is well known. Compression is generally required to efficiently transmit signals over a communications channel, or to store compressed signals on a digital media device, such as a solid-state memory device or computer hard disk. Although there are many compression (or “coding”) techniques, one method that has remained very popular for digital speech coding is known as Code Excited Linear Prediction (CELP), which is one of a family of “analysis-by-synthesis” coding algorithms. Analysis-by-synthesis generally refers to a coding process by which multiple parameters of a digital model are used to synthesize a set of candidate signals that are compared to an input signal and analyzed for distortion. A set of parameters that yield the lowest distortion is then either transmitted or stored, and eventually used to reconstruct an estimate of the original input signal. CELP is a particular analysis-by-synthesis method that uses one or more codebooks that each essentially comprises sets of code-vectors that are retrieved from the codebook in response to a codebook index.
In modern CELP coders, there is a problem with maintaining high quality speech and audio reproduction at reasonably low data rates. This is especially true for music or other generic audio signals that do not fit the CELP speech model very well. In this case, the model mismatch can cause severely degraded audio quality that can be unacceptable to an end user of the equipment that employs such methods. Therefore, there remains a need for improving performance of CELP type speech coders at low bit rates, especially for music and other non-speech type inputs.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help improve understanding of various embodiments. In addition, the description and drawings do not necessarily require the order illustrated. It will be further appreciated that certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. Apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the various embodiments so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein. Thus, it will be appreciated that for simplicity and clarity of illustration, common and well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment may not be depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments.