There are disclosed speech encoding methods and arrangements, including among others a speech synthesizer that reproduces speech from the encoded speech signals. These methods and arrangements employ a reduced bandwidth encoding of speech for which the bandwidth more nearly than in prior arrangements approaches that of the rate of occurrences of the individual sounds (equivalently, the articulatory movements) of the speech by locating the centroid of the individual sound, for example, by employing the zero crossing of a single (v(L)) representing the timing of individual sounds, which is derived from a φ signal which is itself produced from prescribed linear combination of acoustic feature signals, such as log area parameter signals. Each individual sound is encoded at a rate corresponding to its bandwidth. Accuracy is ensured by generating each individual sound signal from the linear combinations of acoustic feature signals for many times frames including the time frame of the centroid. The bandwidth reduction is associated with the spreading of the encoded signal over many time frames including the time frame of the centroid. The centroid of an individual sound is within a central time frame of an individual sound and occurs when the time-wise variations of the φ linear combination signal are most compressed.