In general, techniques are described by which to perform perceptual audio coding as sequential decision making problems. A source device comprising a memory and a processor may be configured to perform the techniques. The memory may store at least a portion of the audio data. The processor may apply a filter to the audio data to obtain subbands of the audio data. The processor may adapt a controller according to a machine learning algorithm, the controller configured to determine bit distributions across the subbands of the audio data. The processor may specify, based on the bit distributions and in a bitstream representative of the audio data, one or more indications representative of the subbands of the audio data, and output the bitstream via a wireless connection in accordance with a wireless communication protocol.