Abstract: A speech compression/decompression system and method which do not require special hardware are described. The compression unit represents an input audio signal as a collection of parameters, wherein the parameters are a remnant excitation pulse sequence, a set of spectral coefficients and a set of pitch parameters. The decompression unit utilizes the pitch parameters and remnant excitation pulse sequence to produce a reconstructed excitation signal. The decompression unit also utilizes the spectral coefficients to filter the reconstructed excitation signal into a speech waveform. The compression unit includes a short-term predictor, a two-step long-term predictor and a multi-pulse analyzer.