Abstract Many parameter-estimation algorithms have been developed for the accurate quantification of NMR data modeled as a sum of K exponentially damped sinusoids. Some well-known time-domain techniques based on subspace estimation and the singular value decomposition are Kumaresan and Tuft's linear prediction method and Kung et al. ’s method based on state–space modeling, etc. All these methods do not use prior knowledge, except the formulation of the data model and the model order estimate K . The best accuracy is obtained with a variant of Kung's method, called HTLS, using the total least-squares principle. In this paper, the HTLS method is extended to the HTLS-PK method, which has the capability to accommodate prior knowledge of some known signal poles. Simulated and real-world NMR signals are processed using the HTLS and HTLS-PK methods to demonstrate the advantage of the new method.