Delay Loop Expansion

When a subset of the resonating modes are nearly harmonically tuned, it can be much more computationally efficient to use a filtered delay loop (see §2.6.5) to generate an entire quasi-harmonic series of modes rather than using a biquad for each modal peak [439]. In this case, the resonator model becomes

where is the length of the delay line in the th comb filter, and is a low-order filter which can be used to adjust finely the amplitudes and frequencies of the resonances of the th comb filter [428]. Recall (Chapter 6) that a single filtered delay loop efficiently models a distributed 1D propagation medium such as a vibrating string or acoustic tube. More abstractly, a superposition of such quasi-harmonic mode series can provide a computationally efficient psychoacoustic equivalent approximation to arbitrary collections of modes in the range of human hearing.

Note that when is close to instead of , primarily only odd harmonic resonances are produced, as has been used in modeling the clarinet [431].

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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.