The Beating Equalizer and Its Application to the Synthesis and Modification of Piano Tones

This paper presents an improved method for simulating and modifying the beating effect in piano tones. The beating effect is an audible phenomenon, which is characteristic to the piano, and, hence, it should be accounted for in realistic piano synthesis. The proposed method, which is independent of the synthesis technique, contains a cascade of second-order equalizing filters, where each filter produces the beating effect for a single partial by modulating the peak gain. Moreover, the method offers a way to control the beating frequency and the beating depth, and it can be used to modify the beating envelope in existing tones. The results show that the proposed method is able to simulate the desired beating effect.