The Scientist & Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing

This is without question the best academic book I've ever read. Mr. Smith is so articulate and clear. He starts at the very beginning and approaches each new concept carefully, building on the concepts you've already read about. Usually when I'm having difficult understanding something, I find he has already answered it in the previous page. His presentation is logical, intuitive, and on occasion entertaining. It's concise and well-formed but not off-putting like the majority of text books I've read. All the information is there and in plain English. A monkey (who understands English, of course) could read this book from start to finish and be an expert in DSP. I found the pdf online but ended up buying the book just because it was so good and I wanted a copy to make notes in and cherish.

This is an excellent college-level introduction to digital signal processing, especially if you wish to learn more about the underlying theory and application; i.e., how signal processing actually works. Yes, there is some math, but it's not the primary focus, and the author is very upfront about this. The author's style is conversational and friendly, and he provides plenty of examples, graphs and pictures, with a focus on the actual mechanics of signal processing. This is in contrast to a number of DSP texts that emphasize the underlying mathematics over the mechanics, some to the point where one wonders how the actual mechanics of signal processing even work. This book fills in those gaps. It should probably be read before taking on a math-heavy course or used in conjunction with one. I would recommend it as a primer or tutorial before beginning a typical engineering course in DSP or to have on hand while working with the standard math-heavy text. It will really fill in the knowledge gaps.

I started reading this book online by chapters because I wanted to learn about Fourier Transforms. That reading exceeded my expectations on my understanding without getting deep into the weeds of mathematics. I was reading it online so often, I decided to go for this hard copy. I find new chapters in the hard copy such as digital image processing and the Z-transform that were not in the online version. The chapters are well organized and any engineer or serious experimenter or inventor will be able to select a specific topic and understand the concepts of Digital Signal Processing without a deep mathematics background. You will need a good foundation in high school Analytic Geometry and the Pythagorean Theorem. Basic calculus would help but you only need to understand logarithms and what the Sigma summation symbol means. With that basic understanding, you will be on your way to being a DSP expert.

This is unquestionably the clearest introduction to digital signal processing and Fourier analysis that I've ever encountered. I've been in the field for years now, mostly self-taught (academic background in stats and machine learning). I bought this text to "fill the gaps" in my learning, and pick up more about filter design. The author stitches together concepts extremely effectively, while providing both math and code examples. A neat idea for a second edition could be to replace the BASIC with Python, but it's ultimately not nessecary. Anyone who can do basic programming (in any language) should be able to understand the code examples.

I got to chapter 7 and so far the content is easy to digest and understandable , even with a personal delay on mathematics for 28 years. As an IT professional I find the MS Basic language which is used in the book a bit harder to read. Most of the time the usage of DSP will be in C. The scope of the book is very well structured in the chapters , the pictures tell a lot of the story and as such it is well balanced with the text that explain in more detail. Overall : the book I needed to get started in DSP.

I liked that the author explained things at a level that most engineers would immediately grasp. I particularly liked the fact that most of the digital signal processing was explained without resorting to z-transforms. z-transforms are fine for someone taking a semester-long course in DSP, but for someone who just wants to create a moving-average filter and wants to understand what the resulting spectrum will look like, z-transforms can be quite off-putting. This book provides the answers.

I've really needed to know about DSP for a while, so I decided to dive in. The inter-webs said that this was the right book, and it sure is. Cleanly written, it has nicely filled in the math fuzzy patches from classes 40 years ago, and then proceeded into the good stuff. I am getting it strictly under self-study, and it is helping with an app I am building. I bought the book, but couldn't wait to start, so downloaded all of the on-line chapters and started working through them. When the book arrived, I found it wasn't an exact match: the author's web page has a few extra chapters near the end. But it is the same great stuff. I will continue through all this on the beach over the next week. It has been a while since I have been this excited about math.

Eased of understand the contents

As expected

Parfaitement adapté à mon cas : intéressé par l'électronique numérique, besoin d'acquérir rapidement des connaissances en traitement du signal, mais malheureusement avec un bagage mathématique un peu léger. Les chapitres suivent une progression logique, chacun revenant sur des notions expliquées dans les précédents. Il y a beaucoup de graphiques, et des exemples de code facile à suivre (en BASIC, donc certainement plus utilisables aujourd'hui, mais faciles à traduire dans un langage plus actuel). Le style est assez plaisant à lire, plus ingénieur - voire bidouilleur - qu'académique. La totalité du livre est disponible en ligne, et même téléchargeable - j'avais lu quelques chapitres en ligne avant de le commander - mais je ne regrette pas un instant d'avoir acheté la version papier.

Detailed set of knowledge about producing audio effects and neighbouring areas of science. Especially S to Z transformation explains a lot. Pity I found this book 20 years too late.

This is a great book in terms of breadth, depth and effort put into explaining DSP to those with limited maths skills (I learnt new stuff about moving average filters from this book). While I have the 'heavy' books on DSP, for a quick refresh I'd grab this book or "Understanding DSP" by Richard Lyons (this one has the edge for anything involving 2D DSP, i.e. image processing).