Patent attributes
A source encoder encodes audio signals into increasing quality layers defined in bit planes. Each bit plane has a data unit that includes a beginning partition having one or more contiguous refinement bits, a second partition having one or more contiguous coded significance bits, a third partition having one or more contiguous sign boundary mark bits, and a fourth partition having one or more contiguous coded sign bits. A channel encoder encodes the bit planes into respective columns containing multiple rows. Unequal error protection coding is provided according to the quality of each layer such that each row has row and column channel protection codes for the respective row and column that correspond to the respective quality layer. For the corresponding row and column, each row contains the row channel protection codes and either the compressed audio data from the respective layer or the column channel protection codes. A server machine can use a network feedback transmission to allocate bits to the source encoder and the channel encoder.