To manage processing time on a reproduction side, when a voice signal of multi-channels is coded with a variable compression rate.

Predictive coding circuits 13D1, 13D2, and 15D1 to 15D4, and a buffer selection units 14D1, 14D2, and 16D1 to 16D4 predictively encodes a six channel voice signal in a voice coding method. A decoding time stamp (DTS) creating unit 17 creates decoding time stamp information for indicating timing to read a compression data in an input buffer 22a of a decoding side, according to a prediction coding data amount for each channel, and a formatting circuit 19 formats it into a packet which has a packet header including the decoding time stamp information, and a user data including the compression data.

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