Multi-channel audio energy loss compensation

For a multi-channel reconstruction of audio signals based on at least one base channel, an energy measure is used for compensating energy losses due to an predictive upmix. The energy measure can be applied in the encoder or the decoder. Furthermore, a decorrelated signal is added to output channels generated by an energy-loss introducing upmix procedure. The energy of the decorrelated signal is smaller than or equal to an energy error introduced by the predictive upmix. Thus, problems occurring for prediction based up-mix methods such as up-mixing signals that are coded with High Frequency Reconstruction techniques are solved, so that the correct correlation between the up-mixed channels is obtained or the up-mix is adapted to arbitrary down-mixes.