Apparatus and Method for Stereo Filling in Multichannel Coding

An apparatus for decoding an encoded multichannel signal of a current frame to obtain three or more current audio output channels is provided. A multichannel processor is adapted to select two decoded channels from three or more decoded channels depending on first multichannel parameters. Moreover, the multichannel processor is adapted to generate a first group of two or more processed channels based on the selected channels. A noise filling module is adapted to identify for at least one of the selected channels, one or more frequency bands, within which all spectral lines are quantized to zero, and to generate a mixing channel using, depending on side information, a proper subset of three or more previous audio output channels that have been decoded, and to fill the spectral lines of frequency bands, within which all spectral lines are quantized to zero, with noise generated using spectral lines of the mixing channel.