DC Blocker Frequency Response

Figure B.11 shows the frequency response of the dc blocker for several values of . The same plots are given over a log-frequency scale in Fig.B.12. The corresponding pole-zero diagrams are shown in Fig.B.13. As approaches , the notch at dc gets narrower and narrower. While this may seem ideal, there is a drawback, as shown in Fig.B.14 for the case of : The impulse response duration increases as . While the ``tail'' of the impulse response lengthens as approaches 1, its initial magnitude decreases. At the limit, , the pole and zero cancel at all frequencies, the impulse response becomes an impulse, and the notch disappears.

Note that the amplitude response in Fig.B.11a and Fig.B.12a exceeds 1 at half the sampling rate. This maximum gain is given by . In applications for which the gain must be bounded by 1 at all frequencies, the dc blocker may be scaled by the inverse of this maximum gain to yield

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.