23. A method of quantizing a vector representative of a portion of a speech or audio signal in an encoder, comprising: (a) determining an error term corresponding to a candidate codevector of a set of candidate codevectors, the error term being a function of the candidate codevector and the vector; (b) determining whether the candidate codevector is legal based upon one or more illegal space definitions, when the error term is better than a current best error term; (c) updating the current best error term with the error term, when the error term is better than the current best error term and the codevector is legal; (d) repeating steps (a), (b) and (c) for all of the candidate codevectors, thereby establishing a best legal candidate codevector corresponding to the best current error term, whereby the best legal candidate codevector corresponds to a quantization of the vector; and (e) transmitting to a decoder a signal representative of the portion of the speech or audio signal based on the best legal candidate codevector.
23. A method of quantizing a vector representative of a portion of a speech or audio signal in an encoder, comprising: (a) determining an error term corresponding to a candidate codevector of a set of candidate codevectors, the error term being a function of the candidate codevector and the vector; (b) determining whether the candidate codevector is legal based upon one or more illegal space definitions, when the error term is better than a current best error term; (c) updating the current best error term with the error term, when the error term is better than the current best error term and the codevector is legal; (d) repeating steps (a), (b) and (c) for all of the candidate codevectors, thereby establishing a best legal candidate codevector corresponding to the best current error term, whereby the best legal candidate codevector corresponds to a quantization of the vector; and (e) transmitting to a decoder a signal representative of the portion of the speech or audio signal based on the best legal candidate codevector. 32. The method of claim 23 , further comprising: determining that no legal candidate codevector exists among the set of candidate codevectors; thereafter determining a best one of the candidate codevectors that are not legal based on the error terms; and thereafter transmitting to the decoder at least one of the best one of the candidate codevectors that are not legal, and an index identifying the best one of the candidate codevectors that are not legal.