A disclosed method includes monitoring an audio signal energy level while having a noise suppressor deactivated to conserve battery power, buffering the audio signal in response to a detected increase in the audio energy level, activating and running a voice activity detector on the audio signal in response to the detected increase in the audio energy level and activating and running a noise estimator in response to voice being detected in the audio signal by the voice activity detector. The method may further include activating and running the noise suppressor only if the noise estimator determines that noise suppression is required. The method activates and runs a noise type classifier to determine the noise type based on information received from the noise estimator and selects a noise suppressor algorithm, from a group of available noise suppressor algorithms, where the selected noise suppressor algorithm is the most power consumption efficient.