The invention relates to a method for determining an encoding parameter for an audio channel signal of a multi-channel audio signal, the method comprising: determining a frequency transform of the audio channel signal; determining a frequency transform of a reference audio signal; determining inter channel differences for at least each frequency sub-band of a subset of frequency sub-bands, each inter channel difference indicating a phase difference or time difference between a band-limited signal portion of the audio channel signal and a band-limited signal portion of the reference audio signal in the respective frequency sub-band the inter-channel difference is associated to; determining a first average based on positive values of the inter-channel differences and determining a second average based on negative values of the inter-channel differences; and determining the encoding parameter based on the first average and on the second average.