To provide a means for regulating the sound level of a signal delivered from a telephone receiver to be audible for a user when the telephone receiver is located in a limited space by determining the degree of environmental limitation in the vicinity of the receiver.

The communication receiver comprises a speaker and/or a microphone and the means for automatically adapting the volume thereof. The volume is adapted depending on the acoustic environment around the receiver, especially the degree of environmental limitation. A limitation detecting comprises an adaptive filtering means for modeling the sound channel of the receiver by pulse response of an adaptive filter, and the means for calculating the ratio of the partial power of pulse response to the total power and determining an estimation of the degree of limitation by comparing the power ratio with a reference value. The invention is applicable to a mobile telephone.