The invention relates to a parametric encoder for encoding an audio or speech signal into sinusoidal code data. Such parametric encoders typically comprise a segmentation unit 120 for segmenting said signal s into at least one single scale segment xm(n) with m = 1 ... M and for outputting the samples xm(0), ..., xm(L-1) of said segment xm(n) and comprise a sinusoidal estimation unit 140 for estimating the sinusoidal code data representing said segment xm(n) from said samples. It is the object of the invention to improve a parametric encoder and method such that the achievement of a required time-frequency resolution trade-off is facilitated. This is achieved by embodying the segmentation unit 120 such that it carries out a frequency-warping operation in order to transform the output samples xm(0), ..., xm(L-1) onto a frequency-warp domain and by providing a post-processing filter 160 for re-mapping the sinusoidal code data output by the sinusoidal estimation unit 140 to the original frequency domain of the signal s. |