New Audio Analysis Method with Application for Synthesis, Editing and Compression

A new audio coding method was developed that allows efficient decomposition of audio signal into periodic and noise components. The components can be recombined after processing operations, such as compression or editing, to reconstruct a modified version of the audio signal . The sound model can be used also to store and modify clips of sounds for synthesis applications, such as concatenative synthesis of speech or music.

The main advantages of the model are:

1. A robust encoding method based on parametric sound model.
2. The model is capable of encoding music and/or multiple speakers (contrary to parametric models of speech that assume a single speaker).
3. The coding captures both partials and noise in one representation, which is easy to use, encode or edit.
4. The decisions about the periodic and noise parts are done in the decoder, while the encoder remains "light-weight".
5. Modular representation offers progressive coding, so that intelligibility and quality can be gracefully compromised.
6. It has good potential for data reduction / compression, possibly for low bit rate music encoding less than 10kbps.
7. The method has very efficient implementation utilizing existing optimized hardware and software architectures.

Case No: SD2006-177
Keywords: audio codecs, compression
Inquiries To:  invent@ucsd.edu