IIRFilterNode: getFrequencyResponse() method

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since April 2021.

The getFrequencyResponse() method of the IIRFilterNode interface takes the current filtering algorithm's settings and calculates the frequency response for frequencies specified in a specified array of frequencies.

The two output arrays, magResponseOutput and phaseResponseOutput, must be created before calling this method; they must be the same size as the array of input frequency values (frequencyArray).

Syntax

js
getFrequencyResponse(frequencyArray, magResponseOutput, phaseResponseOutput)

Parameters

frequencyArray

A Float32Array containing an array of frequencies, specified in Hertz, which you want to filter.

magResponseOutput

A Float32Array to receive the computed magnitudes of the frequency response for each frequency value in the frequencyArray.

phaseResponseOutput

A Float32Array to receive the computed phase response values in radians for each frequency value in the input frequencyArray.

Return value

None (undefined).

Exceptions

NotSupportedError DOMException

Thrown if the three arrays provided are not all of the same length.

Examples

In the following example we are using an IIR filter on a media stream (for a complete full demo, see our stream-source-buffer demo live, or read its source). As part of this demo, we get the frequency responses for this IIR filter, for five sample frequencies. We first create the Float32Array objects we need, one containing the input frequencies, and two to receive the output magnitude and phase values:

js
const myFrequencyArray = new Float32Array(5);
myFrequencyArray[0] = 1000;
myFrequencyArray[1] = 2000;
myFrequencyArray[2] = 3000;
myFrequencyArray[3] = 4000;
myFrequencyArray[4] = 5000;

const magResponseOutput = new Float32Array(5);
const phaseResponseOutput = new Float32Array(5);

Next we create a <ul> element in our HTML to contain our results, and grab a reference to it in our JavaScript:

html
<p>IIR filter frequency response for:</p>
<ul class="freq-response-output"></ul>
js
const freqResponseOutput = document.querySelector(".freq-response-output");

Finally, after creating our filter, we use getFrequencyResponse() to generate the response data and put it in our arrays, then loop through each data set and output them in a human-readable list at the bottom of the page:

js
const feedforwardCoefficients = [0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5];
const feedbackCoefficients = [0.5, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1];

const iirFilter = audioCtx.createIIRFilter(
  feedforwardCoefficients,
  feedbackCoefficients,
);

// …

function calcFrequencyResponse() {
  iirFilter.getFrequencyResponse(
    myFrequencyArray,
    magResponseOutput,
    phaseResponseOutput,
  );

  for (let i = 0; i < myFrequencyArray.length; i++) {
    const listItem = document.createElement("li");
    listItem.textContent = `${myFrequencyArray[i]}Hz: Magnitude ${magResponseOutput[i]}, Phase ${phaseResponseOutput[i]} radians.`;
    freqResponseOutput.appendChild(listItem);
  }
}

calcFrequencyResponse();

Specifications

Specification
Web Audio API
# dom-iirfilternode-getfrequencyresponse

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also