AUDIO DECODER, AUDIO ENCODER, AND RELATED METHODS USING JOINT CODING OF SCALE PARAMETERS FOR CHANNELS OF A MULTI-CHANNEL AUDIO SIGNAL

An audio quantizer for quantizing a plurality of audio information items, comprises: a first stage vector quantizer (141, 143) for quantizing the plurality of audio information items to determine a first stage vector quantization result and a plurality of intermediate quantized items corresponding to the first stage vector quantization result; a residual item determiner (142) for calculating a plurality of residual items from the plurality of intermediate quantized items and the plurality of audio information items; and a second stage vector quantizer (145) for quantizing the plurality of residual items to obtain a second stage vector quantization result, wherein the first stage vector quantization result and the second stage vector quantization result are a quantized representation of the plurality of audio information items.