The defect frequency amplitude of the High-Frequency Resonance Technique spectrum is a useful feature for bearing diagnosis. However, it is dependent on the accuracy of the resonance frequency band selection. The vibration data are filtered, with the resonance frequency band being the passband. An alternative approach based on Empirical Mode Decomposition and Instantaneous Energy is proposed to obtain the filtered signal without the need of identifying the resonance frequency band. The objective is to maximize the defect frequency amplitude of the High-Frequency Resonance Technique spectrum. The proposed approach is compared with various optimization techniques and the frequently used Fast Kurtogram approach. These approaches are compared for the simulated and experimental data (seeded and natural defects). The comparison reveals that the proposed approach performs superior to the Fast Kurtogram approach and close to optimization algorithms (the best possible) in a fraction of the time taken by these techniques. © 2021 Elsevier Ltd