Product Description

Digital techniques for processing sound described in accessible language! C++ programmers involved in digital signal processing (DSP) for telephony, audio, video and user interface development will learn how to achieve: - Normal effects to replicate natur

Digital signal processing and human sound perception explained in accessible language! Includes practical DSP programming tricks, techniques to compensate for acoustic and instrument limitations, a treasure trove of C++ software tools for Windows 32-bit sound programming, and source code for DSP and User Interface advancements for the WinTel platform.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1099591 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 413 pages

About the Author
Doug Coulter recalls that his first engineering/hobby projects used tubes. He has kept up with technological advances ever since as he worked in private and public sectors. Doug has worked as a freelance consultant and writer for the last 20 years. Consulting projects have included process control, prosthetics for the deaf, hearing aids, embedded system and opsys development, CPU design, audio test equipment, telecom equipment development, and DSP development and instruction. Doug lives on a farm in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains, where he grows much of his own food, generates his own electricity, plays drums, guitar, and keyboards, and runs a digital recording studio.

Customer Reviews

A big disappointment.
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.

What a mess...
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).

amateur book writing skills and bad programming skills
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...