Abstract: A method for compressing digital sound data in which method a sound signal is divided for encoding into temporal segments and the sound samples of a segment, which are originally presented by N0 number of bits, are requantized by one or more number of bits which are smaller than N0, is characterized in that an upper limit is set for the quantization error, and one of the greatest absolute sound samples of the segment is selected as a fixed point (xp) on the basis of which said smaller number of bits and the value of the quantization step are defined and such an amount of the sound samples of the segment are quantized by means of them that the upper limit of the quantization error is not exceeded, whereby the samples quantized in this way form a group of values associated to the fixed point (xp) concerned and quantized by said smaller number of bits and the value of the quantization step.