The design of a battery-powered, portable headphone active noise control system with TI TMS320C5416 DSP is described. The preliminary implementation of the system on a C5416 DSK is also explained. The problems of fixed-point implementation are described and solutions are proposed. Sign-sign Fx-LMS algorithm with a dead-zone is introduced and used as the adaptation algorithm. Effective use of dynamic range to improve the accuracy in filtering operations is discussed. Details of the designed battery-powered DSP board are given and board software development process is explained. The DSK system and designed portable system is compared against two commercially available analog systems under three different types of noises / composition of tones, drill noise and propeller plane cabin noise. The results reveal that adaptive system has better overall performance.