The system for suppressing an ambient noise signal which contaminates a desired signal includes a noise pickup detector (21) for detecting the ambient noise signal. A noise discriminator (22) processes the detected noise signal into noise data. A reference noise generator (40) converts the noise data into a reference noise signal. The noise generator (40) automatically adjusts the reference noise signal to correspond with changes in the noise signal as it is being detected. A filter (24) filters the reference noise signal into an error signal which is adapted to remove the noise signal from the contaminated signal. A cross-correlator (42) cross-correlates the contaminated signal with the reference noise signal and adjusts the filter (24) to produce the required error signal.