1. A speech enhancement system operative to suppress noise from a received signal comprising: a background noise estimator that measures a background noise level in the received signal; a transient noise detector operative to store a model of a noise component within a memory and operative to detect the presence of a transient noise in the received signal; and a noise attenuator in communication with the transient noise detector and operative to substantially remove the transient noise from the received signal when an attribute of the received signal substantially matches an attribute of the stored model of the noise component; where the transient noise detector is operative to disable or modulate the background noise estimator during a period of time when an instantaneous background noise level of the received signal exceeds an average background noise level of the received signal by more than a predetermined threshold.