A performance comparison of three representative ADM systems has been made by computer simulation using real speech. The three systems studied are continuously variable slope delta modulation (CVSD), Jayant's constant factor delta modulation (CFDM), and a modified version of Un and Magill's hybrid companding delta modulation (HCDM). Among the three systems, HCDM yields the best performance in signal-to-quantization noise ratio (SQNR) and dynamic range regardless of the channel bit error rate. Comparing CVSD and CFDM in an ideal channel, the dynamic range of the latter is significantly wider than that of the former, although their peak SQNR's are almost the same. In a noisy channel, CFDM degrades more rapidly than the other two as the bit error rate increases. In the channel with an error rate above 10^-3, the use of CFDM appears to be impractical when the bit rate is below 16 khits/s. However, intelligible speech transmission is possible with HCDM or CVSD even at the error rate of as high as 10^-1.