Jointly optimal quantization of parameters in sinusoidal audio coding

In this paper, we present new methods for jointly optimal scalar quantization of parameters in sinusoidal audio coding. The sinusoidal amplitudes, frequencies, and phases used to represent (the tonal component of) an audio signal are quantized such as to minimize a single-letter perceptual distortion measure under a given bit-rate constraint. The asymptotically optimal scalar quantizers are derived analytically using high-rate theory. We present different practical methods, where quantization accuracy of some parameters is made dependent on quantized values of other parameters. The choice of method depends on the availability of the frequency-masking threshold, defining the perceptual importance of the individual sinusoids, at the decoder. The high performance of our quantizers is demonstrated by means of a listening test