The pitch predictor is one of the most important part for the robust tree coder. The hybrid backward pitch adapation which is a combination of a block adaptation and a recursive adaptation is used for the pitch predictor. In order to improve the error performance and track the pitch period change of the input speech, it is proposed to smooth the input of the pitch predictor. The smoother with three taps can have fixed coefficients or variable coefficients depending on the estimated autocorrelation function of the output of the pitch synthesizer. The inclusion of a variable smoother can track the pitch period change within a block and reduce the effect of channel errors.