Systems, methods, and other embodiments associated with soft decoding for a quantized channel are described. According to one embodiment, a method includes repetitively controlling the soft decoder to attempt to decode the signal based, at least in part, on a reliability measure selected from a pre-determined collection of reliability measures. When the soft decoder fails to decode the signal, the method includes computing a new reliability measure and repetitively controlling the soft decoder to attempt to decode the signal based, at least in part, on the new reliability measure. When the soft decoder decodes the signal with the new reliability measure, the method includes adding the new reliability to the pre-determined collection of reliability measures.