Patent ID: 8670988

Claim:
A speech coding apparatus that encodes a speech signal which has an active speech component and an inactive speech component, the speech coding apparatus comprising: a first coder that encodes by a first coding method a segment of the speech signal to generate first coded data; a second coder that encodes by a second coding method that is different from the first coding method the segment of the speech signal to generate second coded data, which differs from the first coded data, when the segment of the speech signal is inactive speech; a first determination section that determines whether the segment of the speech signal is active speech or inactive speech; a second determination section that determines whether to use the second coded data when the segment of the speech signal is inactive speech; and an embedding section that overwrites a portion of the first coded data with the second coded data, wherein the portion of the first coded data being overwritten has less than a predetermined sensitivity, when the first determination section determines that the segment of the speech signal is inactive speech and the second determination section determines that the second coded data is to be used.