An apparatus for encoding a multi-channel signal including at least two channels includes a time-spectral converter for converting sequences of blocks of sampling values of the at least two channels into a frequency domain representation having sequences of blocks of spectral values for the at least two channels; a multi-channel processor for applying a joint multi-channel processing to the sequences of blocks of spectral values to obtain at least one result sequence of blocks of spectral values including information related to the at least two channels; a spectral-time converter for converting the result sequence of blocks of spectral values into a time domain representation including an output sequence of blocks of sampling values; and a core encoder for encoding the output sequence of blocks of sampling values to obtain an encoded multi-channel signal.