APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR ENCODING/DECODING AN AUDIO SIGNAL USING AN ALIASING SWITCH SCHEME

An apparatus for encoding an audio signal comprises the windower (11) for windowing a first block of the audio signal using an analysis window having an aliasing portion and a further portion. The apparatus furthermore comprises a processor (12) for processing the first sub-block of the audio signal associated with the aliasing portion by transforming the sub-block from a domain into a different domain subsequent to windowing the first sub-block to obtain the processed first sub-block, and for processing a second sub-block of the audio signal associated with the further portion by transforming the second sub-block from the domain into the different domain before windowing the second sub-block to obtain a processed second sub-block. The apparatus furthermore comprises a transformer (13) for converting the processed first sub-block and the processed second sub-block from the different domain into a further different domain using the same block transform rule to obtain a converted first block which may then be compressed using any of the well-known data compression algorithms. Thus, a critically sampled switch between two coding modes can be obtained, since aliasing portions occurring in two different domains are matched to each other.