1. A method for adaptive echo cancellation, comprising: configuring an adaptive foreground filter to apply to a block of data including a sparse impulse response to generate a foreground filtered response; calculating an echo return loss responsive to the foreground filtered response; identifying the location of one or more peaks repetitively in the block of data in a background filter; confirming one or more identified peaks over a defined number of blocks before defining an active region equally about the identified peaks in the background filter; filtering the sparse impulse response responsive to at least one active region, calculating an echo return loss responsive to the background filtered sparse impulse response; comparing the second echo return loss responsive to the background filter with the first echo return loss responsive to the foreground filter; and when a peak is confirmed and when the second echo return loss exceeds the first echo return loss, replacing coefficients from the adaptive foreground filter by the coefficients from the background filter to create a modified foreground filter.