An apparatus for encoding an audio signal having a stream of audio samples has: a windower for applying a prediction coding analysis window to the stream of audio samples to obtain windowed data for a prediction analysis and for applying a transform coding analysis window to the stream of audio samples to obtain windowed data for a transform analysis, wherein the transform coding analysis window is associated with audio samples within a current frame of audio samples and with audio samples of a predefined portion of a future frame of audio samples being a transform-coding look-ahead portion, wherein the prediction coding analysis window is associated with at least the portion of the audio samples of the current frame and with audio samples of a predefined portion of the future frame being a prediction coding look-ahead portion, wherein the transform coding look-ahead portion and the prediction coding look-ahead portion are identically to each other or are different from each other by less than 20%; and an encoding processor for generating prediction coded data or for generating transform coded data.