complementary IIR filters I would like a pair of complementary IIR filters (lowpass/highpass). By complementary, I mean, when the output from the two filters is summed, the original signal is recovered. I thought I could build such pairs with butterworth filters but using a little math, I discovered only 1st order filters were complementary. I thought I'd done this before, but I'm forgetting how.

Is something wrong with my math? Is there an easy solution I'm forgetting about?

Thanks!
The frequency response of the two complementary filters are $H_2(e^{j\theta}) = 1 - H_1(e^{j\theta})$, or the impulse responses $h_2[n] = \delta[n] - h_1[n]$.

For an IIR filter, $H_1(z)$ can be written as $\frac{b_0 + b_1 z^{-1} + \ldots}{a_0 + a_1 z^{-1} + \ldots}$. Then $H_2(z)$ should be something like $\frac{(a_0 - b_0) + (a_1 - b_1) z^{-1} + \ldots}{a_0 + a_1 z^{-1} + \ldots}$.

So the non-recursive coefficients for $H_2$ are now $(a_0-b_0)$, $(a_1 - b_1)$, etc.

The recursive coefficients are the same for both filters.