Encoding of Higher Order Ambisonics (HOA) signals commonly results in high data rates. For data rate reduction, a method (100) for encoding direction information for frames of an input HOA signal comprises determining (s101) active candidate directions (I) among predefined global directions having global direction indices, dividing (s102) the input HOA signal into frequency subbands (II), determining (s103) for each frequency subband active subband directions among the active candidate directions, assigning (s104) a relative direction index to each direction per subband, assembling (s105) direction information for the frame, the direction information comprising the active candidate directions (I), for each subband and each active candidate direction a bit indicating whether or not the active candidate direction is an active subband direction for the respective frequency subband, and for each frequency subband the relative direction indices of active subband directions in the second set of subband directions, and transmitting (s106) the assembled direction information.