Multi-precision technique for digital audio encoder
US7117053B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Oct 26, 1998 |
| Grant date | Oct 3, 2006 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Oct 26, 2018 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC G)Physics
- CPC primaryG10L19/16
- WIPO fieldComputer technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
AC-3 is a high quality audio compression format widely used in feature films and, more recently, on Digital Versatile Disks (DVD). For consumer applications the algorithm is usually coded into the firmware of a DSP Processor, which due to cost considerations may be capable of only fixed point arithmetic. Commercial AC-3 Encoders have been successfully implemented on 20-bit and 24-bit word-length processors. However, it is generally assumed that 16-bit processing is incapable of delivering the high fidelity audio, expected from the AC-3 technology. Double precision computation can be utilised on such processors to provide the high quality; but the computational burden of such implementation will be beyond the capacity of the processor to enable real-time operation. Through extensive simulation study of a high quality AC-3 Encoder implementation, a multi-precision technique for each processing block is presented whereby the quality of the encoder on a 16-bit processor matches the single precision 24-bit implementation very closely without excessive additional computational complexity.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.