A method of buffering includes determining, based at least in part on a radix of a data symbol, a number of discrete values resulting from coding the data symbol into a buffer. The number of discrete values is compared with a buffer capacity of the buffer. The buffer is scaled based at least in part on the radix of the data symbol if the number of discrete values does not exceed the buffer capacity of the buffer. The data symbol is coded into the scaled buffer if the number of discrete values does not exceed the buffer capacity of the buffer.