US Patent 7411528 Apparatus and method of processing an audio signal

In one embodiment, a block of audio data is partitioned into N sub-blocks, and a plurality of code parameters s(0), s(1), . . . s(N−1) are determined. The N sub-blocks are entropy encoded using a plurality of entropy codes defined by the plurality of code parameters, and the code parameters are transmitted. The code parameters may be transmitted by directly transmitting s(0) representing the code parameter of the first sub-block, and transmitting a difference s(i)−s(i−1) for i=1, . . . N−1, s(i) representing the code parameter of an ith sub-block following the first sub-block.