Also called a "voice codec" or "vocoder," it is a hardware circuit that converts the spoken word into digital code and vice versa. It comprises the A/D and D/A conversion and compression technique (see G. standards). If music is encoded with a speech codec, it will not sound as good when decoded at the other end.
Specialized for Voice
A speech codec is an audio codec designed for human voice. By analyzing vocal tract sounds, a recipe for rebuilding the sound at the other end is sent rather than the soundwaves themselves. The speech codec is able to achieve a much higher compression ratio, which results in a smaller amount of digital data for transmission. When telephones were first digitized in the early 1960s, they generated digital streams of 64 Kbps (see
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