In signal processing, group delay and phase delay are functions that describe in different ways the delay times experienced by a signal’s various sinuoidal frequency components as they pass through a linear time-invariant (LTI) system (such as a microphone, coaxial cable, amplifier, loudspeaker, communications system, ethernet cable, digital filter, or analog filter).
Unfortunately, these delays are sometimes frequency dependent,[1] which means that different sinusoid frequency components experience different time delays. As a result, the signal's waveform experiences distortion as it passes through the system. This distortion can cause problems such as poor fidelity in analog video and analog audio, or a high bit-error rate in a digital bit stream.