There is provided a method of using an adaptive tilt compensation by a speech decoder. The method comprises receiving a bit stream including a plurality of parameters representative of a speech signal; identifying an adaptive code vector and a fixed code vector using the plurality of parameters; scaling the adaptive code vector and the fixed code vector to generate a scaled adaptive code vector and a scaled fixed code vector; summing the scaled adaptive code vector and the scaled fixed code vector to generate a synthesized output; calculating a first reflection coefficient based on the plurality of parameters representative of the speech signal; multiplying the first reflection coefficient by a factor to generate a tilt factor; and applying the tilt factor to the synthesized output based on an encoding bit rate.