The expected amplitude of overlapping partials of harmonic sounds

In analyzing polyphonic signals, the handling of overlapping partials is one important problem. The assumptions usually made for partial overlaps are the additivity of the linear spectrum or that of the power spectrum. In this study, the expected amplitude of two overlapping partials is derived based on the assumption that the partials overlap at the same frequency and the phase is uniformly distributed. An overlap chain rule algorithm is proposed to estimate the amplitude for the case that more than two partials overlap. The proposed algorithm has demonstrated its better accuracy over the usual two model assumptions.