A method includes detecting whether there is a very short pitch lag in a speech or audio signal that is shorter than a conventional minimum pitch limitation using a combination of time domain and frequency domain pitch detection techniques. The pitch detection techniques include using pitch correlations in a time domain and detecting a lack of low frequency energy in the speech or audio signal in a frequency domain. The detected very short pitch lag is coded using a pitch range from a predetermined minimum very short pitch limitation that is smaller than the conventional minimum pitch limitation.