Customer Reviews

Digital Audio Processing (with CD-ROM)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This book teaches almost nothing about sound processing. The writing style is bad, actually this is a monolog of a DSP expert showing off what he knows. There's no one subject that he explains well. He assumes that the reader has technical knowledge in many subjects that are outside the scope of the book. for example, in one section were he describes quadrature sampling, he just throws that it's better then using wavelets. Wavelets are not explain anywhere in the book though... The book is filled with senteces like the above. Even worse, most of the time the autor talks about programming for windows, MFC, code optimizations and GUI - Subjects not very related to Audio DSP. The author seems to be a very talented guy, but he doesn't know how to write books. Don't buy it.

I ignored the bad reviews and bought the book anyway because it's one of the few dealing with digital audio. I should have been more careful. Both the book and the CD are a complete mess. Have you ever seen a book starting with a chapter describing which other books to read next ? No ? Buy this one. This gives you a flavor of how the book is organized. The writing style is atrocious and filled with useless personal considerations. If you are a DSP expert, then you already know what's in the book. If you are new to digital audio, then don't expect to learn much from this book. The author seems more concerned about showing how smart he is than teaching you digital audio. The source code provided on the CD is not any better. Rather than providing small code snippets that can be easily reused, the author provides a full wave editor program probably written by generations of students who did not follow even the most elementary coding standards. Most of the code is not indented and hardly commented, making it extremely hard to follow. Functions are so intricate that it is virtually impossible to reuse anything (the use of MFC does not help anything). Most of the book is dedicated to explaining what's in the wave editor and how to use it. A total waste of time and money. The worst book I have ever seen (I buy over 10 computer and technology books a year).

Well I was expecting something a little more professional. His knowledge of the DSP world is not in debate, but his communication skills defintely are. This is not really a techincal manual, this is an 'author-having-a-converstation-about-dsp' type book. He just talks about DSP in his own words and throws out over-generalized, under-explained concepts of DSP with slight regard to audio processing, with very few real models or examples.

And for you programmers like myself, his code is almost UNREADABLE! His tab formatting is worthy of a true amateur hack. Don't expect to be able to use his code intelligently without a lot of reorganizing.

The book does have some redeaming qualities. Some of his explanations do manage to intrigue and delight you. However, overall I'm dissapointed, as this book was marketed more as a Programmer's bible to dsp, but there is nearly no programming examples or ideas even in the book. Just talk...

By reading the books description, it seemed to be exactly what I needed. However, it fails to deliver much of what was expected. The author provides very little explanation into any theory and says "just try out the software and see for yourself." The author says himself many times, "the source code it way clearer than anything I can explain." There is practically no source code in the book itself, just on the CD. And the author does not explain any of it. Overall, I was very unsatisfied with the book. After reading it I felt I had no better understanding of the subject than before I bought the book. The author relies on his example program in the CD for you to figure out everything. If I wanted to do that, I'd download an example program from the internet with source code.

I do not believe that this is a very good book for programmers who are wishing to learn DSP. I'm sure this book is of value to a particular audience. Unfortunately, I'm not in that group. Here's my advice: if you want an explanation of how and why different audio effects function the way they do, if you want a general understanding to different DSP principles, or/and if you plan on writing your own code and need some type of direction, like a few brief examples (well-commented & an explanation of the source code), then DON'T BY THIS BOOK! As I began to look elsewhere to find the information I was looking for, I realized that this author failed to explain the topics. The source code was not even useful because there was not much of an explanation behind the work. Too much hype.

I was very excited about this book until I read it. It presses all the right buttons up front, but the actual content doesn't deliver. He claims to explain DSP concepts in understandable English, but every explanation is less than one page and laced with jargon like 'passband'. Even worse, he explained the one concept I was familiar with and got it WRONG! (Nyquist's limit is optimistic, but he thinks it's the highest sampling rate you'd need for a given frequency.)

There were more typos and awkward sentences than usual, the guy never shuts up about how old-school and experienced he is, he uses 'affect' when he probably means 'effect', and he pads out the book with Windows programming tips and an introduction to efficient PC code.

Overall, it seems like an experienced consultant with very high self-esteem trying to make a few extra bucks on the side. Please make a quality product next time!

This book is simply hideous, and if the rating system would let me give it zero stars I would do just that. The text will not enlighten you if you do not understand audio signal processing, and if you already do understand it, nothing will be added to your knowledge. The only thing worthwhile about the book is the table of contents, since it does act as an outline of the subjects you should know, in order, if you intend to learn about digital audio signal processing. Following this table of contents as a guide, you should learn about psychoacoustics, digital signal processing in general, analysis & synthesis of sound, user interface methods, and finally effects specific to sound and compression methods if you wish to call yourself knowledgeable of audio signal processing. Unfortunately, you will learn none of that from this book. Instead, what you get is a sort of wandering novel consisting of the author's memoirs and musings on signal processing subjects. There are virtually no instructive diagrams, no equations, no pseudocode, just page after page of conversational text. Sure, I grant you that the author talks about subjects that I have not found in other texts, but that is part of the whole problem- he just chatters on incessantly about these subjects without being the least bit instructive. Some authors who write useless texts at least include source code on their CD's that partially make up for their lack of talent as writers/instructors. In this case you shall have no such luck. The code is one monolithic ball of lint so deeply entrenched in windows-specific MFC code that it is virtually impossible to unravel. There are no comments to speak of to enlighten you as to what is going on in any of the code. Instead the reader will find comments such as "i suggest somebody to fix that" and "saves typing later".
If you do want to learn about digital audio processing, you might want to take a tip from the table of contents and start with psychoacoustics and pick up the excellent "Music, Cognition, and Computerized Sound: An Introduction to Psychoacoustics" by Perry Cook, which is good enough for self-study. For DSP for the music-centric reader, try "A Digital Signal Processing Primer : With Applications to Digital Audio and Computer Music" by Ken Steiglitz- it is very instructive, has plenty of equations and diagrams, and reads like a novel. Next, for analysis and synthesis of sound, find a copy of "Musical Applications of Microprocessors" by Hal Chamberlain. It was written in 1985, but it is an excellent introduction to sound analysis and synthesis in general and has a very good section on digital filters specific to audio. These three volumes should get you on your way to saying you understand digital audio processing. If you are a more advanced reader, read the two excellent volumes by Udo Zolzer- "Digital Audio Signal Processing" and "DAFX"- in that order.

If you have a good basic understanding of sound and C++ programming, and a desire to put the two together, you may have experienced some difficulty in finding material to help you do it. If you know what I'm talking about, then this book may be exactly what you're looking for. Not only do you get good "plain English" introductions to advanced DSP subjects, but for the fidgety programmer who can't be happy just reading about it, a CD full of ready-to-run code awaits your experimentation. Not just buggy examples either, but a full-blown app written in Visual C++ 6.0 that you can examine, modify, and use as a platform to get your own ideas up and running quickly. As if that weren't enough, the author includes his own thoughts on how and where to learn more, including excellent recommendations for further reading.

I was thrilled when I paged through my freshly delivered copy of "Digital Audio Processing". It's exactly what I was looking for. If you have struggled painfully through other DSP texts like I have, when all you really wanted was some friendly helpful text and a wealth of solid C++ code on a CD-ROM, buy this book! Apparently some people missed the prominently placed sentence: "I wrote this book mainly for Windows programmers who want to add DSP skills to their bag of tricks, and who find current DSP references obscure or unapproachable." In my case, that sentence _made_ me buy the book and I'm glad I did.

If you do want to further round out your DSP theory knowledge I recommend Rick Lyons "Understanding Digital Signal Processing", also available from Amazon. It was the only DSP book I was able to work all the way through before I bought Mr. Coulter's.

"Digital Audio Processing", by Doug Coulter, ISBN 0-87930-566-5, Copyright 2000 by CMP Media, Inc, except where noted otherwise. Publisher: R&D Books, Lawrence, KS.

This book is a great aid to anyone trying to learn about and apply DSP at audio frequencies. Doug Coulter provides lots of impressive, working audio processing software that runs on widely used Windows PCs, and explains it all in an informative and friendly manner. The reader will want to go and get Microsoft Visual C++ V6.0 to modify the source code. A CD full of code and utility files comes with the book.

Doug demystifies much of the confusion surrounding he subject of audio DSP. For example, how does one calculate the filter parameters for an arbitrary FIR filter? Articles often give a particular set of parameters for this filter or that filter, but don't explain how to compute different parameter sets for different filter responses, leaving me totally in the dark. Doug simplified it, for me at least: just take the desired filter response and run it through an FFT! This is much easier for someone like myself. I have downloaded and played with the deceptively simple FFT, and the amazing things it can do. My grasp of the operation behind the FFT is weak, but that doesn't stop me from using it, and learning a great deal of useful stuff by playing with it. And with this book, Doug has opened some more toolboxes for me to play with.

Highly recommended!