A speech processing system has been developed which is capable of providing an accurate indication of whether or not a given speech segment is voiced or unvoiced. In comparison to other existing techniques, this one avails itself for easy implementation, and it offers a realiable voiced/unvoiced (V/UV) decision even in the presence of some competing speech and noise sources. In addition, the V/UV decision is achieved in real time with time delays of

ms going from voiced to unvoiced speech, and

ms going from unvoiced to voiced speech.