Karplus–Strong string synthesis
Karplus–Strong string synthesis is a method of physical modelling synthesis that loops a short waveform through a filtered delay line to simulate the sound of a hammered or plucked string or some types of percussion.
At first glance, this technique can be viewed as subtractive synthesis based on a feedback loop similar to that of a comb filter for z-transform analysis. However, it can also be viewed as the simplest class of wavetable-modification algorithms now known as digital waveguide synthesis, because the delay line acts to store one period of the signal.
Alexander Strong invented the algorithm, and Kevin Karplus did the first analysis of how it worked. Together they developed software and hardware implementations of the algorithm, including a custom VLSI chip. They named the algorithm "Digitar" synthesis, as a portmanteau for "digital guitar".
The fundamental frequency (specifically, the lowest nonzero resonant frequency) of the resulting signal is the lowest frequency at which the unwrapped phase response of the delay and filter in cascade is . The required phase delay D for a given fundamental frequency F0 is therefore calculated according to D = Fs/F0 where Fs is the sampling frequency.
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