Signals and Systems for Speech and Hearing [Paperback]

Stuart Rosen (Author), Peter Howell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0125972318 | ISBN-13: 978-0125972314 | Publication Date: January 2, 1991 | Edition: 1

This novel book introduces speech and hearing sciences students to the principles of "signal" and "system" analysis. Beginning with an examination of what signals and systems are, the book develops a thorough background from which many of the most important issues in speech and hearing can be tackled. Numerous illustration

Key Features
* The first dedicated text on this subject
* Presents techniques for speech and hearing analysis and experiments
* Contains minimal mathematics in describing a highly technical field
* An introductory text for students in speech, hearing and psychology

Editorial Reviews

Review

I fully expect it to become a standard for both advanced undergraduate and graduate courses in Communication Sciences and Disorders. At the present time, it has no competition. --Irving Hochberg, CUNY

From the Back Cover

Many people working in the speech and hearing sciences come from non-technical backgrounds, making it difficult for them to master the essential technical underpinnings of the area. This book provides a thorough introduction to the concepts of signals and systems analysis that play a role in the speech and hearing sciences, using only minimal mathematics. Although not an introduction to speech and hearing per se, all of the examples discussed in the text are drawn from relevant areas-primarily theperipheral auditory system and the source-filter theory of speech production. The theoretical principles behind commom instrumentation used (such as tape recorders and sound spectrographs) is also discussed. An informal yet informative style is maintained throughout. Because much of the story is told through some 300 illustrations (all newly prepared specifically for this text), great care has been taken to make them clear and accurate. Exercises are provided at the end of each chapter.
This book provides a comprehensive course for the student entirely new to the field, while also providing a reference for the experienced worker. It will be essential for students of audiology, speech therapy, phonetics and psychology.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 322 pages
• Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited; 1 edition (January 2, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0125972318
• ISBN-13: 978-0125972314
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #476,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Supplementary background for acoustic phonetics, June 19, 2003

By 

Karen Chung (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Signals and Systems for Speech and Hearing (Paperback)

If you read this book, it should be somewhere after the first but not much beyond the second or third work you tackle on acoustic phonetics. If you read it too early, you probably won't get what is meant by 'systems' in this context, or their relevance to acoustic phonetics and speech processing; if you read it too late, you will have already learned most of the material elsewhere.

Topics covered in this volume include: properties of sinusoid waves; LTI (linear time-invariant) systems; amplitude responses; frequency, period, and phase (this book offers greater coverage of phase than most books of its kind); the dB scale; systems that filter sound signals, like the ear and the vocal tract; spectra and spectrograms; and digitization of signals: quantization, sampling, aliasing, and reconversion to analogue.

This book is not an introduction to acoustic phonetics, and it does not go into great detail on any one topic; it attempts, rather, to provide reader-friendly technical background on many of the central concepts and tools of acoustic phonetics to non-engineering types, and to help the reader feel more comfortable with them. There are exercises at the end of each chapter which I generally found more difficult than mastering the chapter content, but they are useful in determining how well you grasped the material.

I wouldn't call this book an absolute must-read, but it's a leisurely way to review key concepts of acoustic phonetics and pick up a few new ones on the way.