Audio coding using variable-depth multistage quantizers

Digital coding of high-fidelity audio signals has become a key technology in the development of cost-effective multimedia systems. Most audio coding algorithms rely on (i) removal of statistical redundancies in the signal and (ii) exploitation of masking properties of the human auditory system to hide distortions in the coded signal. Transform and subband coders provide a convenient framework for time-frequency domain signal analysis and coding based on these two principles. We present a subband coding algorithm for high-quality coding of 48 kHz sampled audio signals that is based on perceptual transformation, variable-depth multistage uniform quantization, and complexity-constrained higher-order entropy coding. The construction does not require any training and avoids completely the need to send side information