This paper describes modifications to a previously proposed 8-kb/s 4-ms-delay CELP speech coding algorithm with a view to improving the speech quality while maintaining low delay and only moderately increasing complexity. The modifications are intended to improve the effectiveness of interframe pitch lag prediction and the sub-optimality level of the excitation coding to the backward adapted synthesis filter by using delayed decision and joint optimization techniques. Results of subjective listening tests using Japanese speech indicate that the coded speech quality is significantly superior to that of the 8-kb/s VSELP coder which has a 20-ms delay. A method that reduces the computational complexity of closed-loop 3-tap pitch prediction with no perceptible degradation in speech quality is proposed, based on representing the pitch-tap vector as the product of a scalar pitch gain and a normalized shape codevector.