What is the best use for an idealfilter?

I was recently looking for appropriate filters for filtering gigabytes of strain and acceleration data within a specific frequency ranges. I came across the idealfilter function, which appeared to be quite fast and performed exceptionally well in comparison to high order (+20) IIR and FIR filters.

Thus, I have come to wonder what are the downsides of using the idealfilter in comparison to common IIR filters (cheby2, butter) for example. I could notice that the upsides are speed and good attenuation. Is idealfilter only performing well with 1D vector applications?

I have attached a code, where I apply some filtering to a Tohoku earthquake recording (in .mat format) to play around with, if needed.

Would be grateful if you could give some advise and share your experience.

[Mathieu NOE]

hi

I wonder if idealfilter is more or less in one package what we used to do with filtfilt combined with your prefered FIR or IIR filter