An improved audio compression scheme is provided. The scheme uses an excitation pattern to more efficiently provide audio signal compression. Under the scheme, an input signal is transformed to the frequency domain. Next, the excitation pattern corresponding to the transformed input signal is calculated. Bit allocation processing is then performed based on the excitation pattern. Frequencies are then coded based on the results of the bit allocation processing. Finally, bitstream packing is performed to generate the output coded audio bit stream. In one exemplary implementation, the audio compression scheme is implemented in an encoder.