Quantization matrices facilitate digital audio encoding and decoding. An audio encoder generates and compresses quantization matrices; an audio decoder decompresses and applies the quantization matrices. For example, the audio encoder generates a quantization matrix including weighting factors and processes a set of weighting factors according to a parametric model to switch between a direct representation and a parametric representation of the set of weighting factors, where the parametric representation of the set of weighting factors accounts for audibility of distortion according to a model of human auditory perception. In another example, an audio encoder receives a band weight representation of a ciuantization matrix and compresses the band weight representation of the quantization matrix using linear predictive coding, wherein the compressing includes computing pseudo-autocorrelation values for the quantization matrix. For example, a matrix includes weights for bands of a group of frequency coefficients.