alias-free waveform generation with analog filtering ---------------------------------------------------- Ok, here is how I did it. I'm not 100% sure that everything is correct. I'll demonstrate it on a square wave instead, although i havent tried it. The impulse response of an analog pole is: r(t) = exp(p*x) if t >= 0, 0 if t < 0 notice that if we know r(t) we can get r(t+1) = r(t)*exp(p). You all know what the waveform looks like. It's a constant -1 followed by constant 1 followed by ..... We need to convolve the impulse response with the waveform and sample it at discrete intervals. What if we assume that we already know the result of the last sample? Then we can "move" the previous result backwards by multiplying it with exp(p) since r(t+1) = r(t)*exp(p) Now the problem is reduced to integrate only between the last sample and the current sample, and add that to the result. some pseudo-code: while forever { result *= exp(pole); phase += freq; result += integrate(waveform(phase-freq*t), exp(t*pole), t=0..1); } integrate(square(phase-freq*t), exp(t*pole), t=0..1) The square is constant except for when it changes sign. Let's find out what you get if you integrate a constant multiplied with exp(t*pole) =) integrate(k*exp(t*pole)) = k*exp(t*pole)/pole k = square(phase-freq*t) and with t from 0 to 1, that becomes k*exp(pole)/pole-k/pole = (exp(pole)-1)*k/pole the only problem left to solve now is the jumps from +1 to -1 and vice versa. you first calculate (exp(pole)-1)*k/pole like you'd normally do then you detect if phase goes beyond 0.5 or 1. If so, find out exactly where between the samples this change takes place. subtract integrate(-2*exp(t*pole), t=0..place) from the result to undo the error Since I am terribly bad at explaining things, this is probably just a mess to you :) Here's the (unoptimised) code to do this with a saw: note that sum and pole are complex. float getsample() { sum *= exp(pole); phase += freq; sum += (exp(pole)*((phase-freq)*pole+freq)-(phase*pole+freq))/pole; if (phase >= 0.5) { float x = (phase-0.5)/freq; sum -= exp(pole*x)-1.0f; phase -= 1; } return sum.real(); } There's big speedup potential in this i think. Since the filtering is done "before" sampling, aliasing is reduced, as a free bonus. with high cutoff and high frequencies it's still audible though, but much less than without the filter. If aliasing is handled in some other way, a digital filter will sound just as well, that's what i think. -- Magnus Jonsson