of the steps in echo path change detection and adjustment process 300 can be changed without departing from the scope of the present invention at step 312 echo canceller 200 measures the performance of both foreground adaptive filter 220 and background adaptive filter 225 in one embodiment the performance is measured by determining the erle for each filter which can be described as the energy difference between sin signal 202 and error signal 227 as a gain parameter that is defined in db at step 314 the erle of foreground adaptive filter 220 is compared against the erle of background adaptive filter 225 if the performance of background adaptive filter 225 is better than that of foreground adaptive filter 220 in one embodiment echo path change detection and adjustment process 300 moves to step 316 or in another embodiment echo path change detection and adjustment process 300 moves to step 318 at step 316 one or more parameters of background adaptive filter 225 are copied into respective parameters of foreground adaptive filter 220 to make foreground adaptive filter 220 operate as good as background adaptive filter 225 yet if echo path change detection and adjustment process 300 moves to step 318 foreground adaptive filter 220 is configured to operate in the downsample domain again to locate a new bulk delay as in step 302 next at step 320 foreground adaptive filter 220 is configured to operate in an open loop mode as in.