in my attempts to synthesize a plucked electric guitar string (using supercollider's digital waveguide, which is based on the Karplus-Strong algorithm) I came to a dead end and decided to look that the Cepstrums of a sampled string and my synthesized string, to nail down the audible differences. They look like this (A-string - 110Hz)
My questions are:
The sampled signal has something in the right half, which the synthesized signal does not. I cannot see how to interpret this as "excitation". So what does it stand for?
Is it safe to say, that the spectrum of the synthesized spectrum is more "harmonic" than the one of the sampled signal? When I look at the spectra themselves it does appear this way. The sampled spectrum (left) looks more "noisy")
Could it be that the regularity (and the dull sound) of the synthesized signal is a consequence of the digital waverguide itself. The way I understand Karplus-Strong, after some time only the fundamental and its harmonics survive, which would indeed lead to a "harmonic" spectrum.
If that is the case, what could be the cause of the irregularties of a real plucked string. IOW: what does a real string have, which Karplus-Strong doesn't have?
As a side note: what does the sharp peak at the end of the Cepstrum stand for? Is it caused by the 1 second window?