Summary: An alternative approach to digital filter design is presented. The overall technique is as follows: Starting from frequency domain constraints and a parameterized expression of the filter family under adaptation, a corresponding training set is created, an error function is synthesized and a global minimization process is executed. At the end, the point that minimizes globally the particular cost function at hand determines the optimal filter. The adopted numerical optimization algorithm is based upon the well-known simulated annealing paradigm and its implementation is known as fuzzy adaptive simulated annealing. Although it is used in this paper to fit FIR filters to frequency domain specifications, the method is suitable to application in other problems of digital filter design, where the matter under study can be stated as finding the global minimum of a numerical function of filter parameters. Design examples are shown to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach.