An inventive method for introducing information into a data stream
including data about spectral values representing a short-term spectrum
of an audio signal first performs a processing of the data stream to
obtain the spectral values of the short-term spectrum of the audio
signal. Apart from that, the information to be introduced are combined
with a spread sequence to obtain a spread information signal, whereupon a
spectral representation of the spread information is generated which will
then be weighted with an established psychoacoustic maskable noise energy
to generate a weighted information signal, wherein the energy of the
introduced information is substantially equal to or below the
psychoacoustic masking threshold. The weighted information signal and the
spectral values of the short-term spectrum of the audio signal will then
be summed and afterwards processed again to obtain a processed data
stream including both audio information and information to be introduced.
By the fact that the information to be introduced are introduced into the
data stream without changing to the time domain, the block rastering
underlying the short-term spectrum will not be touched, so that
introducing a watermark will not lead to tandem encoding effects.