A method of adaptively determining a threshold for determining whether an error associated with a frame is an erasure or the result of a discontinuous transmission (DTX) uses a sample set of recently received frames yet avoids undesirable influences on the threshold that otherwise might be caused by the number of erasures in the sample set. A disclosed example uses a histogram-based approach and a simulated sort through the histogram to determine an appropriate threshold value. In a disclosed example the lesser of a bad frame threshold guideline value and a good frame threshold guideline value provide the threshold used to distinguish between a DTX and an erasure.