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Digital Filtering

Simple FIRComb Filter Built From Scratch Educational Example

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The Simple FIRComb Filter Built From Scratch Educational Example board in the WaveWarp DrawingBoard
Simple FIRComb Filter Built From Scratch Educational Example — the board as it opens in the WaveWarp DrawingBoard.

What it does

Simple FIR comb filter built from scratch

Illustrates how to build a simple FIR comb filter from a delayed version of the signal connected in parallel with the original signal. This filter is known as a "Finite Impulse Response" (FIR) filter since the output depends only on the sequence of inputs (by contrast, an "Infinite Impulse Response" (IIR) filter utilises the previous outputs as well as the inputs). Play the DrawingBoard and observe the characteristic "comb" response displayed in the magnitude plot.

For a detailed discussion on this basic filter, see: "The Computer Music Tutorial", Curtis Roads, The MIT Press, 1996 (p.413-416).

Delays and gains are the elemental buliding blocks of all filters. Try building more elaborate filters from these basic blocks. Note that ASCII input and output files (included but unconnected in this DrawingBoard) are very useful when prototyping a filter design since they allow direct access to the exact input/output numerical data, without the scaling inherent to WAV I/O conversions.

Effects used

8 blocks 7 connections