A fast parasitic-insensitive continuous-time filter and equalizer integrated circuit that uses an active integrator is described. Circuit techniques for excess-phase cancellation, and for setting the corner-frequency of the filter and equalizer are also described. These techniques result in a filter and equalizer chip with performance independent of process, supply, and temperature without employing phase-lock loops. This 20MHz 6th order Bessel filter and 2nd order equalizer operate from 5V, and generate only 0.24% (-52dB) of total harmonic distortion when processing 2Vp-p differential output signals. The device is optimized to limit high-frequency noise and to amplitude equalize the data pulses in hard disk read-channel systems. The device supports data rates of up to 36Mbps, and is built in a 1.5 .mu./4GHz BiCMOS technology.