Unified speech and audio coding (USAC) is the next step in the evolution of audio codecs that are standardized by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). USAC provides consistent quality for music, speech and mixed material, by extending the strength of an audio codec by speech codec functions. Two novel flavors of Spectral Band Replication (SBR) were introduced to enhance the perceptual quality of SBR: the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) based and the Quadrature Mirror Filter (QMF) bank harmonic SBR. The DFT-based SBR has higher frequency resolution for the harmonic transposition process, resulting in good sound quality. The QMF-based SBR has significantly lower computational complexity. This paper describes the detailed technical aspects of the low complexity QMF-based harmonic SBR tool within USAC. A complexity comparison and the listening test results are also presented in the paper.

Authors: Zhong, Haishan; Villemoes, Lars; Ekstrand, Per; Disch, Sascha; Nagel, Frederik; Wilde, Stephan; Chong, Kok Seng; Norimatsu, Takeshi
Affiliations: Dolby Sweden AB; Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS; Panasonic Corporation(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Convention: 131 (October 2011) Paper Number: 8517
Publication Date: October 19, 2011
Subject: Low Bit-Rate Audio Coding

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