Transmission techniques suitable for use in digital subscriber line (DSL) systems such as very high rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) systems are described. One embodiment of the present invention describes a transmission technique related to OFDM from high-speed transmission over twisted-pair cables. The scheme, also known as filtered multitone modulation (FMT), exhibits significantly lower spectral overlapping between adjacent subchannels and provides higher transmission efficiency than discrete multitone modulation (DMT).