An adaptive filter includes a frequency domain adaptation block that analyzes a statistic of coefficient movement in the frequency domain. The adaption block adjusts, in the frequency domain, a parameter (step size or leakage factor) that affects speed of convergence of the adaptive filter based on the analyzed statistic of filter coefficient movement. The filter includes an associated coefficient, statistic of coefficient movement, and parameter for each frequency bin. The coefficients may be complex numbers, and separate real and imaginary statistics and parameters are maintained. The statistic may be direction counts of the filter coefficient movement. The step size may be adjusted to a predetermined minimum value when the current direction of movement of the filter coefficient is different than the predominant direction and otherwise the step size is adjusted approximately proportionally to an amount of predominance by a value based on a direction count of the filter coefficient movement.