FFT with asymmetric windowing?
I'll use the shorthand window for "window function".

With audio, any processing that creates something akin to pre-ringing or pre-echo will sound sloshy like a low bit-rate mp3. This happens when localized energy of a transient or an impulse is spread backwards in time, for example by modification of the spectral data in lapped transforms such as lapped modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT). In such processing, audio is windowed by overlapping analysis windows, transformed, processed in frequency domain (like data-compressed to a smaller bitrate), windowed again with a synthesis window and summed back together. The product of the analysis and synthesis window must be such that the overlapping windows sum to unity.

Traditionally the window functions used have been symmetric, and their width has been a compromise between frequency selectivity (long window) and time-domain artifact avoidance (short window). The wider the window, the more back in time the processing can spread the signal. A more recent solution is to use an asymmetrical window. The two windows used can be mirror images of each other. The analysis window drops from peak to zero fast so that impulses are not "detected" much in advance, and the syntheis window rises from zero to peak fast, so that the effects of any processing are not spread much backwards in time. Another advantage of this is low latency. The asymmetrical windows can have good frequency-selectivity, and can replace variable-sized symmetrical windows in audio compression, like a kind of cure-all. See M. Schnell, M. Schmidt, M. Jander, T. Albert,
R. Geiger, V. Ruoppila, P. Ekstrand,
M. Lutzky, B. Grill, “MPEG-4 Enhanced Low
Delay AAC - a new standard for high quality
communication”, 125th AES Convention, San
Francisco, CA, USA, preprint 7503, Oct. 2008 and another conference paper where they show also the magnitude of the Fourier transform of their window: Schnell, M., et al. 2007. Enhanced MPEG-4 Low Delay AAC – Low Bitrate High Quality Communication. In 122th AES Convention.

Figure 1. Illustration of use of asymmetrical windows in lapped analysis-processing-synthesis. The product (black dashed) of the analysis-window (blue) and the synthesis window (yellowish orange) sums to unity with the window from the previous frame (grey dashed). Further constraints are needed to guarantee perfect reconstruction when using MDCT.

Discrete Fourier transform (DFT, FFT) could be used instead of MDCT, but will in such contexts give redundant spectral data. Compared to DFT, MDCT gives only half of the spectral data while still enabling perfect reconstruction if suitable windows are chosen.

Here is my own asymmetrical window design (Fig. 2) suitable for lapped analysis-processing-synthesis using DFT but not MDCT with which it does not give perfect reconstruction. The window tries to minimize the product of mean-square time and frequency bandwidths (similarly to the confined Gaussian window) while retaining some potentially useful time-domain properties: nonnegative, unimodal with the peak at "time zero" around which the analysis and synthesis windows are mirror images of each other, function and first derivative continuity, zero-mean when the square of the window function is interpreted as an unnormalized probability density function. The window was optimized using differential evolution.

Figure 2. Left: An asymmetrical analysis window suitable for overlapped analysis-processing-resynthesis together with its time-reversed counterpart synthesis window. Right: Cosine window, with the same latency as the asymmetrical window

Figure 3. Magnitude of the Fourier transforms of the cosine window (blue) and the asymmetrical window (orange) of Fig. 2. The asymmetrical window shows better frequency selectivity.

Here is Octave source code for the plots and for the asymmetrical window. The plotting code comes from Wikimedia Commons. On Linux I recommend installing gnuplot, epstool, pstoedit, transfig first and librsvg2-bin for viewing using display.

pkg load signal

graphics_toolkit gnuplot
set (0, "defaultaxesfontname", "sans-serif")
set (0, "defaultaxesfontsize", 12) 
set (0, "defaultaxeslinewidth", 1)

function plotWindow (w, wname, wfilename = "", wspecifier = "", wfilespecifier = "")

  M = 32; % Fourier transform size as multiple of window length
  Q = 512; % Number of samples in time domain plot
  P = 40; % Maximum bin index drawn
  dr = 130; % Maximum attenuation (dB) drawn in frequency domain plot

  N = length(w);
  B = N*sum(w.^2)/sum(w)^2 % noise bandwidth (bins)

  k = [0 : 1/Q : 1];
  w2 = interp1 ([0 : 1/(N-1) : 1], w, k);

  if (M/N &lt; Q)
    Q = M/N;
  endif

  figure('position', [1 1 1200 600])
  subplot(1,2,1)
  area(k,w2,'FaceColor', [0 0.4 0.6], 'edgecolor', [0 0 0], 'linewidth', 1)
  if (min(w) &gt;= -0.01)
    ylim([0 1.05])
    set(gca,'YTick', [0 : 0.1 : 1])
  else
    ylim([-1 5])
    set(gca,'YTick', [-1 : 1 : 5])
  endif
  ylabel('amplitude')
  set(gca,'XTick', [0 : 1/8 : 1])
  set(gca,'XTickLabel',[' 0'; ' '; ' '; ' '; ' '; ' '; ' '; ' '; 'N-1'])
  grid('on')
  set(gca,'gridlinestyle','-')
  xlabel('samples')
  if (strcmp (wspecifier, ""))
    title(cstrcat(wname,' window'), 'interpreter', 'none')
  else
    title(cstrcat(wname,' window (', wspecifier, ')'), 'interpreter', 'none')
  endif
  set(gca,'Position',[0.094 0.17 0.38 0.71])

  H = abs(fft([w zeros(1,(M-1)*N)]));
  H = fftshift(H);
  H = H/max(H);
  H = 20*log10(H);
  H = max(-dr,H);
  k = ([1:M*N]-1-M*N/2)/M;
  k2 = [-P : 1/M : P];
  H2 = interp1 (k, H, k2);

  subplot(1,2,2)
  set(gca,'FontSize',28)
  h = stem(k2,H2,'-');
  set(h,'BaseValue',-dr)
  xlim([-P P])
  ylim([-dr 6])
  set(gca,'YTick', [0 : -10 : -dr])
  set(findobj('Type','line'),'Marker','none','Color',[0.8710 0.49 0])
  grid('on')
  set(findobj('Type','gridline'),'Color',[.871 .49 0])
  set(gca,'gridlinestyle','-')
  ylabel('decibels')
  xlabel('bins')
  title('Fourier transform')
  set(gca,'Position',[0.595 0.17 0.385 0.71])

  if (strcmp (wfilename, ""))
    wfilename = wname;
  endif
  if (strcmp (wfilespecifier, ""))
    wfilespecifier = wspecifier;
  endif
  if (strcmp (wfilespecifier, ""))
    savetoname = cstrcat('Window function and frequency response - ', wfilename, '.svg');
  else
    savetoname = cstrcat('Window function and frequency response - ', wfilename, ' (', wfilespecifier, ').svg');
  endif
  print(savetoname, '-dsvg', '-S1200,600')
  close

endfunction

N=2^17; % Window length, B is equal for Triangular and Bartlett from 2^17
k=0:N-1;

w = -cos(2*pi*k/(N-1));
w .*= w &gt; 0;
plotWindow(w, "Cosine")

freqData = [0.66697133904805994131, -0.20556692772918355727, 0.49267389481655493588, -0.25062332863369246594, -0.42388422228212319087, 0.42317609537724842905, -0.03930334287740060856, -0.11936153294075849129, 0.30201210285940127687, -0.15541616804857899536, -0.16208119255594669039, 0.12843871362286504723, -0.04470810646117385351, -0.00521885027256757845, 0.07185811583185619522, -0.02835116723496184862, -0.01393644785822748498, 0.00780746224568363342, -0.00748496824751256583, 0.00119325723511989282, 0.00194602547595042175];
freqData(1) /= 2;
scale = freqData(1) + sum(freqData.*not(mod(1:length(freqData), 2)));
freqData /= scale;
w = freqData(1)*ones(1, N);
for bin = 1:(length(freqData)/2)
  w += freqData(bin*2)*cos(2*pi*bin*((1:N)-1)/N);
  w += freqData(bin*2+1)*sin(2*pi*bin*((1:N)-1)/N);
endfor
w(N/4+1:N/2+1) = 0;
w(N/8+2:N/4) = (1 - w(N/8:-1:2).*w(7*N/8+2:N))./w(7*N/8:-1:6*N/8+2);
w = shift(w, -N/2);
plotWindow(w, "Asymmetrical");


You may want to use only every second sample of the window because it starts and ends at zero. The following C++ code does that for you so you don't get any zero samples except for in one quarter of the window that is zero everywhere. For the analysis window this is the first quarter and for the synthesis window this is the last quarter. The second half of the analysis window should be aligned with the first half of the synthesis window for calculation of their product. The code also tests the mean of the window (as a probability density function), and showcases the flatness of overlapped reconstruction.

#include &lt;stdio.h&gt;
#include &lt;math.h&gt;

int main() {
  const int windowSize = 400;
  double *analysisWindow = new double[windowSize];
  double *synthesisWindow = new double[windowSize];
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize/4; k++) {
    analysisWindow[k] = 0;
  }
  for (int k = windowSize/4; k &lt; windowSize*7/8; k++) {
    double x = 2 * M_PI * ((k+0.5)/windowSize - 1.75);
    analysisWindow[k] = 2.57392230162633461887-1.58661480271141974718*cos(x)+3.80257516644523141380*sin(x)
      -1.93437090055110760822*cos(2*x)-3.27163999159752183488*sin(2*x)+3.26617449847621266201*cos(3*x)
      -0.30335261753524439543*sin(3*x)-0.92126091064427817479*cos(4*x)+2.33100177294084742741*sin(4*x)
      -1.19953922321306438725*cos(5*x)-1.25098147932225423062*sin(5*x)+0.99132076607048635886*cos(6*x)
      -0.34506787787355830410*sin(6*x)-0.04028033685700077582*cos(7*x)+0.55461815542612269425*sin(7*x)
      -0.21882110175036428856*cos(8*x)-0.10756484378756643594*sin(8*x)+0.06025986430527170007*cos(9*x)
      -0.05777077835678736534*sin(9*x)+0.00920984524892982936*cos(10*x)+0.01501989089735343216*sin(10*x);
  }
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize/8; k++) {
    analysisWindow[windowSize-1-k] = (1 - analysisWindow[windowSize*3/4-1-k]*analysisWindow[windowSize*3/4+k])/analysisWindow[windowSize/2+k];
  }
  printf("Analysis window:\n");
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize; k++) {
    printf("%d\t%.10f\n", k, analysisWindow[k]);
  }
  double accu, accu2;
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize; k++) {
    accu += k*analysisWindow[k]*analysisWindow[k];
    accu2 += analysisWindow[k]*analysisWindow[k];
  }
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize; k++) {
    synthesisWindow[k] = analysisWindow[windowSize-1-k];
  }
  printf("\nSynthesis window:\n");
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize; k++) {
    printf("%d\t%.10f\n", k, synthesisWindow[k]);
  }
  printf("Mean of square of analysis window as probability density function:\n%f", accu/accu2);
  printf("\nProduct of analysis and synthesis windows:\n");
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize/2; k++) {
    printf("%d\t%.10f\n", k, analysisWindow[windowSize/2+k]*synthesisWindow[k]);
  }
  printf("\nSum of overlapping products of windows:\n");
  for (int k = 0; k &lt; windowSize/4; k++) {
    printf("%d\t%.10f\n", k, analysisWindow[windowSize/2+k]*synthesisWindow[k]+analysisWindow[windowSize/2+k+windowSize/4]*synthesisWindow[k+windowSize/4]);
  }
  delete[] analysisWindow;
  delete[] synthesisWindow;
}


And the source code for the optimization cost function to be used with Kiss FFT and an optimization library:

class WinProblem : public Opti::Problem {
private:
  int numParams;
  double *min;
  double *max;
  kiss_fft_scalar *timeData;
  kiss_fft_cpx *freqData;
  int smallSize;
  int bigSize;
  kiss_fftr_cfg smallFFTR;
  kiss_fftr_cfg smallIFFTR;
  kiss_fftr_cfg bigFFTR;
  kiss_fftr_cfg bigIFFTR;

public:
  // numParams must be odd
  WinProblem(int numParams, int smallSize, int bigSize, double* candidate = NULL) : numParams(numParams), smallSize(smallSize), bigSize(bigSize) {
    min = new double[numParams];
    max = new double[numParams];
    if (candidate != NULL) {
      for (int i = 0; i &lt; numParams; i++) {
        min[i] = candidate[i]-fabs(candidate[i])*(1.0/65536);
        max[i] = candidate[i]+fabs(candidate[i])*(1.0/65536);
      }
    } else {
      for (int i = 0; i &lt; numParams; i++) {
        min[i] = -1;
        max[i] = 1;
      }
    }
    timeData = new kiss_fft_scalar[bigSize];
    freqData = new kiss_fft_cpx[bigSize/2+1];
    smallFFTR = kiss_fftr_alloc(smallSize, 0, NULL, NULL);
    smallIFFTR = kiss_fftr_alloc(smallSize, 1, NULL, NULL);
    bigFFTR = kiss_fftr_alloc(bigSize, 0, NULL, NULL);
    bigIFFTR = kiss_fftr_alloc(bigSize, 1, NULL, NULL);
  }

  double *getMin() {
    return min;
  }

  double *getMax() {
    return max;
  }

// ___                                                            __ 1     
// |  \    |       |       |       |       |       |       |     / |       
// |   \   |       |       |       |       |       |       |    /  |       
// |    \_ |       |       |       |       |       |       |   /   |
// |      \|__     |       |       |       |       |       |  /|   |       
// |       |  -----|_______|___    |       |       |       | / |   |       
// |       |       |       |   ----|       |       |       |/  |   |       
// --------------------------------x-----------------------x---|---- 0
// 0      1/8     2/8     3/8     4/8     5/8     6/8     7/8 15/16 
// |-------------------------------|                       |-------|
//            zeroStarts                                   winStarts
//
// f(x) = 0 if 4/8 &lt; x &lt; 7/8
// f(-x)f(x) + f(-x+1/8)f(x-1/8) = 1 if 0 &lt; x &lt; 1/8

  double costFunction(double *params, double compare, int print) {
    double penalty = 0;
    double accu = params[0]/2;
    for (int i = 1; i &lt; numParams; i += 2) {
      accu += params[i];
    }
    if (print) {
      printf("%.20f", params[0]/2/accu);
      for (int i = 1; i &lt; numParams; i += 2) {
        printf("+%.20fcos(%d pi x)", params[i]/accu, (i+1)/2);
        printf("+%.20fsin(%d pi x)", params[i+1]/accu, (i+1)/2);
      }
      printf("\n");
    }
    if (accu != 0) {
      for (int i = 0; i &lt; numParams; i++) {
        params[i] /= accu;
      }
    }
    const int zeroStarts = 4; // Normally 4
    const int winStarts = 2; // Normally 1
    int i = 0;
    int j = 0;
    freqData[j].r = params[i++];
    freqData[j++].i = 0;
    for (; i &lt; numParams;) {
      freqData[j].r = params[i++];
      freqData[j++].i = params[i++];
    }
    for (; j &lt;= smallSize/2;) {
      freqData[j].r = 0;
      freqData[j++].i = 0;
    }
    kiss_fftri(smallIFFTR, freqData, timeData);
    double scale = 1.0/timeData[0];
    double tilt = 0;
    double tilt2 = 0;
    for (int i = 2; i &lt; numParams; i += 2) {
      if ((i/2)%2) {
        tilt2 += (i/2)*params[i]*scale;
      } else {
        tilt2 -= (i/2)*params[i]*scale;
      }
      tilt += (i/2)*params[i]*scale;
    }
    penalty += fabs(tilt);
    penalty += fabs(tilt2);
    double accu2 = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i &lt; smallSize; i++) {
      timeData[i] *= scale;
    }
    penalty += fabs(timeData[zeroStarts*smallSize/8]);
    penalty += fabs(timeData[winStarts*smallSize/16]*timeData[smallSize-winStarts*smallSize/16]-0.5);
    for (int i = 1; i &lt; winStarts*smallSize/16; i++) {
      // Last 16th
      timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/16+i] = timeData[smallSize-winStarts*smallSize/16+i];
      accu2 += timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/16+i]*timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/16+i];
    }
    // f(-1/8+i)*f(1/8-i) + f(i)*f(-i) = 1
    // =&gt; f(-1/8+i) = (1 - f(i)*f(-i))/f(1/8-i)   
    // =&gt; f(-1/16) = (1 - f(1/16)*f(-1/16))/f(1/16)
    //             = 1/(2 f(1/16))
    for (int i = 1; i &lt; winStarts*smallSize/16; i++) {
      // 2nd last 16th
      timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/8+i] = (1 - timeData[i]*timeData[bigSize-i])/timeData[winStarts*smallSize/8-i];
      accu2 += timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/8+i]*timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/8+i];
    }
    // Between 2nd last and last 16th
    timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/16] = 1/(2*timeData[winStarts*smallSize/16]);
    accu2 += timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/16]*timeData[bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/16];
    for (int i = zeroStarts*smallSize/8; i &lt;= bigSize-winStarts*smallSize/8; i++) {
      timeData[i] = 0;
    }
    for (int i = 0; i &lt; zeroStarts*smallSize/8; i++) {
      accu2 += timeData[i]*timeData[i];
    }
    if (print &gt; 1) {
      printf("\n");
      for (int x = 0; x &lt; bigSize; x++) {
        printf("%d,%f\n", x, timeData[x]);
      }
    }
    scale = 1/sqrt(accu2);
    if (print) {
      printf("sqrt(accu2) = %f\n", sqrt(accu2));
    }
    double tSpread = 0;
    timeData[0] *= scale;
    double tMean = 0;
    for (int i = 1; i &lt;= zeroStarts*smallSize/8; i++) {
      timeData[i] *= scale;
      //      tSpread += ((double)i)*((double)i)*(timeData[i]*timeData[i]);
      double x_0 = timeData[i-1]*timeData[i-1];
      double x_1 = timeData[i]*timeData[i];
      tSpread += ((double)i)*((double)i)*(x_0 + x_1)*0.5 - ((double)i)*(2.0/3*x_0 + 1.0/3*x_1) + 0.25*x_0 + 1.0/12*x_1;
      double slope = timeData[i]-timeData[i-1];
      if (slope &gt; 0) {
        penalty += slope+1;
      }
      tMean += x_1*i;
      if (timeData[i] &lt; 0) {
        penalty -= timeData[i];
      }
    }
    double x_0 = timeData[0]*timeData[0];
    for (int i = 1; i &lt;= winStarts*smallSize/8; i++) {
      timeData[bigSize-i] *= scale;
      double x_1 = timeData[bigSize-i]*timeData[bigSize-i];
      tSpread += ((double)i)*((double)i)*(x_0 + x_1)*0.5 - ((double)i)*(2.0/3*x_0 + 1.0/3*x_1) + 0.25*x_0 + 1.0/12*x_1;
      x_0 = x_1;        
      tMean += x_1*(-i);
    }
    tMean /= smallSize;
    penalty += fabs(tMean);
    if (tMean &gt; 0) {
      penalty += 1;
    }
    tSpread /= ((double)smallSize)*((double)smallSize); 
    if (print) {
      printf("tSpread = %f\n", tSpread);
    }
    kiss_fftr(bigFFTR, timeData, freqData);
    double fSpread = 0;
    x_0 = freqData[0].r*freqData[0].r;
    for (int i = 1; i &lt;= bigSize/2; i++) {
      double x_1 = freqData[i].r*freqData[i].r+freqData[i].i*freqData[i].i;
      fSpread += ((double)i)*((double)i)*(x_0 + x_1)*0.5 - ((double)i)*(2.0/3*x_0 + 1.0/3*x_1) + 0.25*x_0 + 1.0/12*x_1;
      x_0 = x_1;
    }
    if (print &gt; 1) {
      for (int i = 0; i &lt;= bigSize/2; i++) {
        printf("%d,%f,%f\n", i, freqData[i].r, freqData[i].i);
      }
    }
    fSpread /= bigSize; // Includes kiss_fft scaling
    if (print) {
      printf("fSpread = %f\n", fSpread);
      printf("%f,%f,%f\n", tSpread, fSpread, tSpread*fSpread);
    }
    return tSpread*fSpread + penalty;
  }

  double costFunction(double *params, double compare) {
    return costFunction(params, compare, false);
  }

  int getNumDimensions() {
    return numParams;
  }

  ~WinProblem() {
    delete[] min;
    delete[] max;
    delete[] timeData;
    delete[] freqData;
    KISS_FFT_FREE(smallFFTR);
    KISS_FFT_FREE(smallIFFTR);
    KISS_FFT_FREE(bigFFTR);
    KISS_FFT_FREE(bigIFFTR);
  }
};