Vibration in internal turning is a problem in the manufacturing industry. A digital adaptive controller for the active control of boring bar vibration may not be a suficient solution to the problem. The inherent delay in a digital adaptive controller delays control authority and may result in tool failure when the load applied by the workpiece on the tool changes abruptly, e.g. in the engagement phase of the cutting edge. A robust analog controller, based on a lead-lag compensator, with simple adjustable gain and phase, suitable for the industry application, has been developed. Also, the basic principle of an active boring bar with embedded actuator is addressed. The performance and robustness of the developed controller has been investigated and compared with an adaptive digital controller based on the feedback filtered-x algorithm. In addition, this paper takes into account those variations in boring bar dynamics which are likely to occur in industry; for example, when the boring bars is clamped in a lathe. Both the analog and the digital controller manage to reduce the boring bar vibration level by up to approximately 50 dB.