Idealized load signals were created to represent the failure of various types of materials under impact loading. The frequency content was investigated using Fourier transform methods. Several types of filtering approaches were applied to these signals. A numerical model of the impact process was used to generate data to study sources of noise in the impact process. Based on these investigations, a filter design was proposed and evaluated on examples of data from experiments. The conventional approaches to filter techniques may not be suitable for high rate data.