Low bitrate audio encoding/decoding scheme having cascaded switches

An audio encoder comprises a first information sink oriented encoding branch such as a spectral domain encoding branch, a second information source or SNR oriented encoding branch such as an LPC-domain encoding branch, and a switch for switching between the first encoding branch and the second encoding branch, wherein the second encoding branch comprises a converter into a specific domain different from the spectral domain such as an LPC analysis stage generating an excitation signal, and wherein the second encoding branch furthermore comprises a specific domain coding branch such as LPC domain processing branch, and a specific spectral domain coding branch such as LPC spectral domain processing branch, and an additional switch for switching between the specific domain coding branch and the specific spectral domain coding branch. An audio decoder comprises a first domain decoder such as a spectral domain decoding branch, a second domain decoder such as an LPC domain decoding branch for decoding a signal such as an excitation signal in the second domain, and a third domain decoder such as an LPC-spectral decoder branch and two cascaded switches for switching between the decoders.