Category Archives: Digital Audio

About coefficient conventions

Posted on January 4, 2017 by Nigel Redmon

It’s been asked many times, so it’s worth an article explaining the conventions used on this site for transfer functions, and why they may differ from what you see elsewhere. People run into this most often with biquads: I use … Continue reading →

Posted in Biquads, IIR Filters, Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Filter frequency response grapher

Posted on December 8, 2016 by Nigel Redmon

Here’s a tool that plots frequency response from filter coefficients. Hz linearlog 10log 2 Plot auto40 dB30 dB20 dB10 dB0 dB-10 dB-20 dB-30 dB-40 dB Max 60 dB80 dB100 dB120 dB140 dB160 dB180 dB Range a coefficients (zeros) b coefficients … Continue reading →

Posted in Biquads, Filters, FIR Filters, IIR Filters, Widgets | 13 Comments

Evaluating filter frequency response

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Nigel Redmon

A question that pops up for many DSP-ers working with IIR and FIR filters, I think, is how to look at a filter’s frequency and phase response. For many, maybe they’ve calculated filter coefficients with something like the biquad calculator … Continue reading →

Posted in Biquads, FFT, Filters, FIR Filters, IIR Filters | 22 Comments

Cascading filters

Posted on September 29, 2016 by Nigel Redmon

Sometimes we’d like to cascade biquads to get a higher filter order. This calculator gives the Q values for each filter to achieve Butterworth response for lowpass and highpass filters. Order: 234567891011121314151617181920 Q values: You can calculate coefficients for all biquad … Continue reading →

Posted in Biquads, Filters, IIR Filters, Widgets | 26 Comments

Filters for synths—the 4-pole

Posted on February 22, 2016 by Nigel Redmon

The last post noted that the two most popular synthesizer filters are the 2-pole state variable, and the 4-pole “Moog style”. And we started with the state variable—simple, popular, and delivering multiple filter outputs (lowpass, bandpass…) simultaneously. Here, we’ll follow … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters, Synthesizers | 5 Comments

Filters for synths–starting out

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Nigel Redmon

We haven’t developed a synth filter here yet… Filters we’ve presented Biquads. While they are useful for many simple cases of filtering, they are not a good choice for analog synthesizer emulation. Most notably, they are poorly suited to time-varying … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters, Synthesizers | Leave a comment

Dither—The Naked Truth video

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Nigel Redmon

This video presents the “naked truth” on dither and truncation error, by stripping away the original signal of a musical clip and listening at different bit levels. I boost the error to a normalized audio volume for easy comparison of … Continue reading →

Posted in Digital Audio, Dither, Video | 2 Comments

Dither widget

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Nigel Redmon
Posted in Digital Audio, Dither, Widgets | Leave a comment

Audio Dither Explained video

Posted on March 13, 2014 by Nigel Redmon

This video discusses the how and why of dither.

Posted in Digital Audio, Dither, Video | 1 Comment

Pole-Zero placement v2

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Nigel Redmon

Pair Pole mag Pole angle Pair Zero mag Zero angle Sample rate (Hz) linearlog Plot A new pole-zero calculator An JavaScript remake of the old Java-based pole-zero placement applet—visit that page for tips on pole-zero locations for standard biquads. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Biquads, Digital Audio, Filters, IIR Filters, Widgets | 13 Comments