A flexible analysis/synthesis tool for transient signals

An overview of a flexible analysis/synthesis tool for transient signals that effectively extends the spectral modeling synthesis (SMS) parametrization of signals from sinusoids+noise to sinusoids+transients+noise is given. The extended model, by explicitly handling transients, provides a more realistic and robust signal analysis/transformation/synthesis tool. Although others have pointed out the need for partitioning SMS into sinusoids+transients+noise, they have not provided a flexible model for transients. The need for an explicit transient model arises because SMS analyzes a signal by first modeling the sinusoidal components of the signal. SMS then subtracts these sinusoidal components from the original signal leaving a residual signal that contains transients+noise. One drawback of SMS is it models this transient+noise residual solely as filtered noise. Our transient model, when used on this residual, first detects where possible transients occur, models the transients, then removes transients from the signal. This leaves a second residual that is slowly varying noise. Attacks are well preserved by the transient model and the noise model now works more effectively. Becuase the transient model is the frequency domain dual to sinusoidal modeling, it retains flexibility and allows for a wide range of signal transformations.