SPEECH CODING AND DECODING APPARATUS AND METHOD WITH NUMBER OF BITS DETERMINATION

An audio signal coding device, an audio signal decoding device and a method to improve audio quality. The audio signal coding device and method include a quantizer that quantizes a given signal according to a number of assigned bits in order to generate a codeword. The coding device includes an extractor that extracts core bits from the generated codeword. The coding device also includes a determiner that determines an optimal value of the number of assigned bits based on an energy level corresponding to the extracted core bits. The audio signal decoding device and method include a dequantizer that dequantizes a given codeword according to the number of assigned bits to generate a decoded signal. The decoding device includes an extractor that extracts core bits from the given codeword. The decoding device also includes a determiner that determines an optimal value of the number of assigned bits used in the dequantizer.