A quantization method for quantizing a received excitation signal, defined as a residual vector also referred to as an excitation vector, for audio coding in a communication system, said excitation signal having an original order of elements, said method comprising the steps of: re-shuffling the elements of said received excitation signal to provide a re-shuffled excitation signal; coding the re-shuffled excitation signal with a variable bit-rate algorithm utilizing a codec having a variable codeword length depending on the amplitude probability whereby a shorter codeword is assigned to a higher amplitude probability to provide a coded excitation signal, said coding of said re-shuffled excitation signal comprises the step (S302') of scalar quantization, SQ, coding said re-shuffled excitation signal using uniform scalar quantization, SQ, followed by the step (S302") of entropy encoding said quantized re-shuffled excitation signal; reassigning codewords of said coded excitation signal if a number of used bits exceeds a predetermined fixed bit rate requirement, defining a set bit budget, to provide a quantized excitation signal by clustering, based on the amplitude level, the elements of the coded excitation signal into groups, where the number of groups depends on the number of levels in the scalar quantization, SQ, such that each amplitude level, or a group of similar amplitude levels corresponds to one group, and iteratively moving elements, from groups other than the group having the shortest codeword length, to the group having the shortest codeword length until the number of used bits is equal to, or less, than the set bit budget to reassign elements from a longer codeword to a shorter codeword, wherein the order of moving elements is in accordance with amplitude level, from lowest to highest amplitude level, and wherein the group from which elements are moved is only changed if this group contains no more elements and the bit rate target is still not met. re-shuffling the elements of said received excitation signal to provide a re-shuffled excitation signal; coding the re-shuffled excitation signal with a variable bit-rate algorithm utilizing a codec having a variable codeword length depending on the amplitude probability whereby a shorter codeword is assigned to a higher amplitude probability to provide a coded excitation signal, said coding of said re-shuffled excitation signal comprises the step (S302') of scalar quantization, SQ, coding said re-shuffled excitation signal using uniform scalar quantization, SQ, followed by the step (S302") of entropy encoding said quantized re-shuffled excitation signal; reassigning codewords of said coded excitation signal if a number of used bits exceeds a predetermined fixed bit rate requirement, defining a set bit budget, to provide a quantized excitation signal by clustering, based on the amplitude level, the elements of the coded excitation signal into groups, where the number of groups depends on the number of levels in the scalar quantization, SQ, such that each amplitude level, or a group of similar amplitude levels corresponds to one group, and iteratively moving elements, from groups other than the group having the shortest codeword length, to the group having the shortest codeword length until the number of used bits is equal to, or less, than the set bit budget to reassign elements from a longer codeword to a shorter codeword, wherein the order of moving elements is in accordance with amplitude level, from lowest to highest amplitude level, and wherein the group from which elements are moved is only changed if this group contains no more elements and the bit rate target is still not met.