An encoding system, comprising: a processor; and a memory device storing instructions executable by the processor, the instructions being executable by the processor to perform a method for encoding an audio signal, the method comprising: receiving a digital audio signal; parsing the digital audio signal into a plurality of frames, each frame including a specified number of audio samples; performing a transform of the audio samples of each frame to produce a plurality of frequency-domain coefficients for each frame; partitioning the plurality of frequency-domain coefficients for each frame into a plurality of bands for each frame, each band having default values of time resolution and frequency resolution resulting from the transform, and each band having a reshaping parameter that represents an adjusted time resolution and an adjusted frequency resolution, the reshaping parameter being a value that indicates a change from the default values of time resolution and frequency resolution to the adjusted values of time resolution and frequency resolution; encoding the parsed, transformed and partitioned digital audio signal to a bit stream that includes each band's reshaping parameter, wherein: for a first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a first alphabet size; and for a second band different from the first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a second alphabet size different from the first alphabet size; and outputting the bit stream. a processor; and a memory device storing instructions executable by the processor, the instructions being executable by the processor to perform a method for encoding an audio signal, the method comprising: receiving a digital audio signal; parsing the digital audio signal into a plurality of frames, each frame including a specified number of audio samples; performing a transform of the audio samples of each frame to produce a plurality of frequency-domain coefficients for each frame; partitioning the plurality of frequency-domain coefficients for each frame into a plurality of bands for each frame, each band having default values of time resolution and frequency resolution resulting from the transform, and each band having a reshaping parameter that represents an adjusted time resolution and an adjusted frequency resolution, the reshaping parameter being a value that indicates a change from the default values of time resolution and frequency resolution to the adjusted values of time resolution and frequency resolution; encoding the parsed, transformed and partitioned digital audio signal to a bit stream that includes each band's reshaping parameter, wherein: for a first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a first alphabet size; and for a second band different from the first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a second alphabet size different from the first alphabet size; and outputting the bit stream. receiving a digital audio signal; parsing the digital audio signal into a plurality of frames, each frame including a specified number of audio samples; performing a transform of the audio samples of each frame to produce a plurality of frequency-domain coefficients for each frame; partitioning the plurality of frequency-domain coefficients for each frame into a plurality of bands for each frame, each band having default values of time resolution and frequency resolution resulting from the transform, and each band having a reshaping parameter that represents an adjusted time resolution and an adjusted frequency resolution, the reshaping parameter being a value that indicates a change from the default values of time resolution and frequency resolution to the adjusted values of time resolution and frequency resolution; encoding the parsed, transformed and partitioned digital audio signal to a bit stream that includes each band's reshaping parameter, wherein: for a first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a first alphabet size; and for a second band different from the first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a second alphabet size different from the first alphabet size; and for a first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a first alphabet size; and for a second band different from the first band, the reshaping parameter is encoded using a second alphabet size different from the first alphabet size; and outputting the bit stream.