An apparatus for reducing a digital filter delay includes means for determining the magnitude response of a desired filter. Means form the real cepstrum of this magnitude response. Means transform the real cepstrum into a complex cepstrum of a corresponding minimum-phase filter having the same magnitude response as the desired filter. A filter applies a smoothly decaying shaping window to the complex cepstrum. Means transform the shaped complex cepstrum into an estimated minimum-phase filter.