An embodiment of the present invention provides a method for generating a downmixed signal, including: performing a time-frequency transform on a received left sound channel signal and a received right sound channel signal to obtain a frequency domain signal, and dividing the frequency domain signal into several frequency bands; calculating a sound channel energy ratio and a sound channel phase difference of each frequency band; calculating a phase difference between the downmixed signal and a first sound channel signal in each frequency band according to the sound channel energy ratio and the sound channel phase difference; and calculating a frequency domain downmixed signal according to the left sound channel signal, the right sound channel signal, and the phase difference between the downmixed signal and the first sound channel signal in each frequency band. This method effectively improves quality of stereo encoding and decoding.