An encoder and a method therein for Pyramid Vector Quantizer, PVQ, shape search, the PVQ taking a target vector x as input and deriving a vector y by iteratively adding unit pulses in an inner dimension search loop. The method comprises, before entering a next inner dimension search loop for unit pulse addition, determining, based on the maximum pulse amplitude, maxampy, of a current vector y, whether more than a current bit word length is needed to represent enloopy, in a lossless manner in the upcoming inner dimension loop. The variable enloopy is related to an accumulated energy of the vector y. The performing of this method enables the encoder to keep the complexity of the search at a reasonable level.