Abstract: A moving-average notch filter with a well-defined phase characteristic for use in eliminating oscillation frequencies in a sound amplification system, wherein this moving-average filter is designed to have an output Y.sub.K in accordance with the system equation ##EQU1## where b.sub.1 are the weighting coefficients, X.sub.K-i are input samples, and K is a constant. This filter may be designed to have a linear phase characteristic. In one embodiment, the location of the notch in the frequency response of the filter may be made to automatically track the drift of an acoustic oscillation frequency.

Abstract: A near minimum order ARMA type recursive filter with guaranteed stability and convergence is provided together with a method for obtaining the parameters of such filter. The amplitude/frequency response of the filter approximates an arbitrarily selected frequency spectrum of amplitude, and the phase response approximates a substantially linear function of frequency with an arbitrarily selected slope because the parameters are identified, off-line, using a minimization process that minimizes an integral error norm. The first step involves performing an inverse discrete Fourier transform of the arbitrarily selected frequency spectrum of amplitude to obtain a truncated sequence of coefficients of a stable, pure moving-average filter model, i.e., the parameters of a non-recursive filter model. The truncated sequence of coefficients, which has N+1 terms, is then convolved with a random sequence to obtain an output sequence associated with the random sequence.