Compared to linear-phase FIRs, minimum-phase FIRs have less delay.  However, that comes at the cost of delay distortion: the delay varies as a function of frequency.  But in applications which do not require linear phase (that is, constant delay at all frequencies), minimum phase FIRs may be preferred.

All of ScopeFIR's design algorithms design linear-phase FIRs, so ScopeFIR creates minimum-phase FIRs by converting linear-phase FIRs to minimum-phase.   That can be done interactively using the Convert to Minimum Phase menu.  However, the Min Phase tab in Design Options allows you to automatically convert linear-phase filters to minimum-phase filters within the FIR design/optimization process.  The resulting filter has the same magnitude response after the conversion: only its phase response is changed.

Unfortunately, the conversion process from linear phase to minimum phase might not succeed.  When conversion fails, ScopeFIR reverts to the original linear-phase filter and optionally shows an error message.

The Min Phase tab provides the following options to control the automatic conversion to minimum phase within the design/optimization process:

• Convert to minimum phase - Enables/disables automatic conversion to minimum phase.
• Maximum number of taps to convert - Sets an upper limit on the number of taps for which conversion will be attempted.
• Maximum frequency response error - Sets an upper limit on the change in the FIR frequency response magnitude before and after conversion.  Since the frequency magnitude response should be unchanged by conversion to minimum phase, a significant change indicates conversion failure.  This option allows you to set the change threshold used to distinguish between success and failure.
• Notify me when the conversion fails - If this is checked, you will see a message box when the conversion fails; otherwise, failed conversions will pass silently.  (Failed conversions usually are obvious from the frequency response plot, so you may prefer to just watch for them there.)

Tips:

• The conversion to minimum phase is more likely to fail as the number of taps increases.  As a rule of thumb, conversion is limited to about 75 taps for lowpass filters.  However, there is no strict rule.  Failure is usually most obvious in stopbands.
• If automatic minimum-phase conversion has not been enabled prior to designing/optimizing, you can also convert manually via the Convert to Minimum Phase menu.  However, if the filter has already been quantized, the  quantized version, not the full-precision version, will be converted.  So, in cases in which you would like to convert to minimum phase and quantize, selecting the Convert to minimum phase design option leads to the most accurate results, because the conversion to be done prior to quantization.