Most of the adaptive feedforward vibration (or noise) compensation systems feature an internal "positive feedback" coupling between the compensator system and the correlated disturbance measurement which serves as reference. This may lead to the instability of the system. Instead of the standard IIR structure for the adaptive feedforward compensator, the paper proposes a Youla-Kucera parametrization of the adaptive compensator. The central compensator assures the stability of the system and its performances are enhanced in real time by the direct adaptation of the Youla-Kucera parameters. Theoretical and experimental comparison with recent results obtained using an IIR adaptive feedforward compensator are provided. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.