Diagonal Complex-Valued State Space Models for System Identification and Modeling of Metal Plate Reverbs

Matthias Bittner; Matthias Wess; Dominik Dallinger; Daniel Schnöll; Axel Jantsch
DAFx-2026 - Cambridge
Accurate and interpretable modeling of plate reverbs remains an important challenge in virtual analog modeling of audio effects. While existing neural network-based black-box approaches already achieve high-quality synthesis and strong perceptual quality, they often lack the possibility to identify the underlying physically meaningful complex, long-memory modal behavior. In this work, we address this limitation by proposing a restricted complex-valued diagonal State Space Model (SSM), showing its equivalence to a parallel second-order all-pole filter, also utilizing efficient training via parallel state computation using the parallel scan algorithm. Additionally, we propose a Matrix Pencil (MP) guided eigenvalue initialization, improving synthesis quality and system identification performance.
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