Extraction of the excitation point location on a string using weighted least-square estimation of a comb filter delay

Caroline Traube; Philippe Depalle
DAFx-2003 - London
This paper focuses on the extraction of the excitation point location on a guitar string by an iterative estimation of the structural parameters of the spectral envelope. We propose a general method to estimate the plucking point location, working into two stages: starting from a measure related to the autocorrelation of the signal as a first approximation, a weighted least-square estimation is used to refine a FIR comb filter delay value to better fit the measured spectral envelope. This method is based on the fact that, in a simple digital physical model of a plucked-string instrument, the resonant modes translate into an all-pole structure while the initial conditions (a triangular shape for the string and a zero-velocity at all points) result in a FIR comb filter structure.
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