A signal having units of two or more bits is compressed into a compressed signal by splitting a unit of two or more bits into an MSB part, which includes the most significant bit of the unit of two or more bits, and an LSB part which does not include the most significant bit of the unit of two or more bits. The MSB part is compressed in a lossless fashion. The LSB part is scalability compressed. The compressed MSB and LSB parts are combined to form the compressed signal.