The present invention provides a method and apparatus for improving the audio quality of a signal by reducing the effect of mis-determining the frame rate of a frame. The method includes the steps of determining that the frame rate of the current frame of information is eighth rate (324/340), determining that the previous frame was a full rate frame (334) and resetting the filter states of a speech decoder (336). The method further comprises the steps of utilizing alternative symbol error thresholds based on the number of consecutive frames with the same frame rate (308/328).