Abstract: A method for minimizing errors in a modulated signal transmitted over a transmission medium. The method is applied to the entire data block, thereby incorporating information about the parities of each row of data to fix and correct the errors in the row. Thereafter ISI removal is applied on a row by row basis, with such corrections being applied via soft decision coding. In particular, the data samples are first collected in a data block (or FEC block). A soft decision buffer is thereafter created by taking each sample involved. An FEC word is created by processing down each row of the soft decision buffer and creating a binary stream out of the sign bits for each table entry. This creates an estimate of the word by thresholding it around the zero level. A syndrome is generated via a comparison of the parity bits for each FEC word. The syndrome provides the most likely bit error positions, represented by an offset into the FEC word.