We present algorithms for the type-IV discrete cosine transform (DCT-IV) and discrete sine transform (DST-IV), as well as for the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) and its inverse, that achieve a lower count of real multiplications and additions than previously published algorithms, without sacrificing numerical accuracy. Asymptotically, the operation count is reduced from 2N log 2 N + O(N ) to 17 9 N log 2 N + O(N ) for a power-of-two transform size N , and the exact count is strictly lowered for all N ≥ 8. These results are derived by considering the DCT to be a special case of a DFT of length 8N , with certain symmetries, and then pruning redundant operations from a recent improved fast Fourier transform algorithm (based on a recursive rescaling of the conjugate-pair split-radix algorithm). The improved algorithms for DST-IV and MDCT follow immediately from the improved count for the DCT-IV.