Customer Reviews

Computer Speech Technology (Artech House Signal Processing Library)

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If you are not into FFT's and HMM's, but are interested in a slightly less mathematical explanation of Automatic Speech Recognition, this is for you. Interesting, and an easy read, watch out though, the next book you get will go math on you fast. This is a great book for non-engineers. You will eveltually out-grow its simple explanations - but that does not make a poor source. The book does not talk down to the novice - in the finiest tradtion of Carl Popper! - Well Done

I tried to use this book for a survey course on computer speech technology, but I couldn't rely on it for much. My students cursed me for making them waste their money on this book. It doesn't talk about the material at a sufficiently high level or with enough detail to satisfy even non-mathematical college students seeking a general overview. One wonders who the intended audience is? The preface says it is professionals in the field of speech (other than engineers), and I can testify it certainly doesn't work for students. The chapters that do go over some of the mathematical underpinnings of speech processing do it in the most unsuccessful of non-mathematical ways, which is to say equations are presented but are not properly explained for those who don't already know what they are about. There is really very little meat here to chew, on a subject that deserves more. Stick to the engineering books if you actually want to know anything about this subject. There is still no alternative but to learn all the math.