Pitch synchronous differential predictive encoding system

A pitch synchronous differential predictive encoding system (p.s.d.p.e.) is described, which reduces the dynamic range of voiced speech to a value similar to that of unvoiced speech. As a consequence, the signal encoded has a smaller dynamic range than the speech signal and results in an improvement in the signal/noise ratio for a given transmitted number of bits per sample. This improvement is approximately 8 dB compared with an a.d.p.c.m. codec, when the p.s.d.p.e. system uses an adaptive p.c.m. encoder and the transmission rate is 3 bit/sample.