<p>A method for generating audio information comprises: receiving an input signal and obtaining therefrom a set of subband signals each having one or more spectral components representing spectral content of an audio signal; identifying within the set of subband signals a particular subband signal in which one or more spectral components have a zero value and are quantized by a quantizer having a minimum quantizing level; generating one or more synthesized spectral components that correspond to the one or more zero-valued spectral components in the particular subband signal and that are scaled according to a scaling envelope based upon the minimum quantizing level; generating a modified set of subband signals by substituting the synthesized spectral components for corresponding zero-valued spectral components in the particular subband signal; and generating the audio information by applying a synthesis filterbank to the modified set of subband signals.</p>