15. An electronic voice mail system for communicating an original speech signal message between a first computer and a second computer among a plurality of networked computers, said system said characterized in that: said first computer system includes a first speech processor operative to generate a compressed encoded speech signal; said second computer system includes a second speech processor operative to generate a decompressed reconstructed speech signal from said encoded signal; said first speech processor comprising: a plurality of delay circuits, each receiving said speech signal f(t) as an input and generating a different time delayed version of said speech signal f(t-Td.sub.i) as an output; a plurality of correlator circuits, each said correlator circuit receiving said input speech signal f(t) and one of said time delayed speech signals f(t-Td.sub.i) and generating a correlation value indicating the amount of correlation between said speech signal f(t) and said time delayed speech signal; a comparator circuit receiving said plurality of correlation values and generating an autocorrelation of said input signal with time delayed versions of said speech signal, one correlation value being received from each of said correlator circuits; a pitch detector receiving said autocorrelation signal and identifying a pitch length for at least a portion of said speech signal; and an encoder receiving said pitch length and said speech signal and generating an encoded version of said speech signal wherein speech pitches of said speech signal are retained or omitted on the basis of said pitch detector input; and said second speech processor comprising: a decoder receiving said encoded speech signal generated by said first speech processor, including receiving a plurality of reference pitches; and interpolation means for interpolating pitches occurring temporally between said reference pitches to generate a reconstructed version of said original speech signal.
15. An electronic voice mail system for communicating an original speech signal message between a first computer and a second computer among a plurality of networked computers, said system said characterized in that: said first computer system includes a first speech processor operative to generate a compressed encoded speech signal; said second computer system includes a second speech processor operative to generate a decompressed reconstructed speech signal from said encoded signal; said first speech processor comprising: a plurality of delay circuits, each receiving said speech signal f(t) as an input and generating a different time delayed version of said speech signal f(t-Td.sub.i) as an output; a plurality of correlator circuits, each said correlator circuit receiving said input speech signal f(t) and one of said time delayed speech signals f(t-Td.sub.i) and generating a correlation value indicating the amount of correlation between said speech signal f(t) and said time delayed speech signal; a comparator circuit receiving said plurality of correlation values and generating an autocorrelation of said input signal with time delayed versions of said speech signal, one correlation value being received from each of said correlator circuits; a pitch detector receiving said autocorrelation signal and identifying a pitch length for at least a portion of said speech signal; and an encoder receiving said pitch length and said speech signal and generating an encoded version of said speech signal wherein speech pitches of said speech signal are retained or omitted on the basis of said pitch detector input; and said second speech processor comprising: a decoder receiving said encoded speech signal generated by said first speech processor, including receiving a plurality of reference pitches; and interpolation means for interpolating pitches occurring temporally between said reference pitches to generate a reconstructed version of said original speech signal. 18. The voice transmission system in claim 15, wherein said first processor comprises a hardware processor including a plurality of specialized speech processing circuits.