importance of symmetric windows for STFT for practical applications I am wondering why is the linear phase property of filters with symmetric coefficients important for some practical applications of short time fourier transform, such as image processing? I have read that the linear phase property will ensure that there will be no phase distortion of the signal by the filter? Can anyone explain the reason?
This example may help you to understand this. 

The plot below shows the step response for two filters that have the same magnitude response, but the first has non constant group delay (non linear phase) while the second has constant group delay (linear phase).

The first filter is a minimum phase version of the second filter.