Abstract: An apparatus for and method of converting soft symbol decision information into soft bit decision information that overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art. The invention is adapted to receive M soft symbol values where each symbol represents m bits (M=2m). The output for each symbol comprises m soft values of bits representing the symbol. The invention is operative to convert the soft symbol values to soft bit values using the log likelihood ratios (LLRs) of a bit and a symbol expressed as conditional probabilities. The method of the invention is presented which can be performed in either hardware or software. A computer comprising a processor, memory, etc. is operative to execute software adapted to perform the soft symbol to bit conversion method of the present invention.