A method and apparatus for speech reconstruction within a distributed speech recognition system is provided herein. Missing MFCCs are reconstructed and utilized to generate speech. Particularly, partial recovery of the missing MFCCs is achieved by exploiting the dependence of the missing MFCCs on the transmitted pitch period P as well as on the transmitted MFCCs. Harmonic magnitudes are then obtained from the transmitted and reconstructed MFCCs, and the speech is reconstructed utilizing these harmonic magnitudes.