jean-marc, i tried like you recommended to resample the 44100 hz speech file with the ess sounds to 16000 hz before speexenc-ing it. result was good actually, i was able to use quality 8 without any signs of sound bleeping, and the file size was very small (7324 bytes compared to 9319 bytes with windows media voice at full quality). the downside to this is that high frequencies are lost, which i think is what is causing the problem in the first place. the voice in the sound clip is not very crisp anymore. would it be possible for speex to recognize parts with ess sounds or particulily [important] high frequencies and decode these at a high bitrate, while keeping the rest [and most] of the stream in lower quality? in other words, make the vbr code more observant? olav <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'speex-dev-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.