What i like best about the book is that the chapters are short - average chapter size is only about 15 pages.Thus material is presented in 'bite-sized' chunks, making it much easier to digest.Also, since the authors opt to focus on breadth more than on depth, the book isn't imposingly thick.The layout is also very nice,making it even more of a pleasure to read.

The clarity of writing is another strong point of the book, as are the illustrations.The authors go to the heart of the matter, successfully imparting the flavour of the topic, be it the basics, or the current state-of-the-art.An excellent chapterwise bibliography makes it easy to trace further details on any topic.

All in all, it's a great book, one which stands out for the originality of its approach and the expertise of its authors. In my opinion, anyone working in the area of Speech/Audio processing should have a copy of this most accessible guide.


Speech and Audio Signal Processing: Processing and Perceptio   March 8, 2000
 21 out of 22 found this review helpful

This is a book much needed in the speech and audio community because of its unique perspective on these topics. By their very nature, speech, music and other audio signals are only fully understood if one takes into account their perception, production, and the context within whcih they exist (language, symphony). To appreciate what to process about such signals, the scientist must have a broad appreciation of linguistics, hearing, vocal tract models, and the brain in general, in addition to the standard engineering tools and approaches. This is why this book is valuable. It indeed attempts to reach out to all these fields with just enough details to inspire the reader, and to provide links to existing more detailed literature. The book is well written, full of excellent illustrations, and it was the perfect choice for a class to graduate students in the Electrical Engineering Department where I teach at the University of Maryland. I highly recommend it.