Analysis of Piano Tones Using an Inharmonic Inverse Comb Filter

This paper presents a filter configuration for canceling and separating partials from inharmonic piano tones. The proposed configuration is based on inverse comb filtering, in which the delay line is replaced with a high-order filter that has a proper phase response. Two filter design techniques are tested with the method: an FIR filter, which is designed using frequency sampling, and an IIR filter, which consists of a set of second-order allpass filters that match the desired group delay. It is concluded that it is possible to obtain more accurate results with the FIR filter, while the IIR filter is computationally more efficient. The paper shows that the proposed analysis method provides an effective and easy way of extracting the residual signal and selecting partials from piano tones. This method is suitable for analysis of recorded piano tones.