Discrete-Time Processing of Speech Signals

It is a classic and a necessary book for researchers in the speech processing area. Undergraduate students might find some sections of the book too theoretical. In which case, it is highly recommended as a reference book. It ranks among the best signal processing books ever written.

This book covers many aspects of speech signal processing. In doing so, it is a great conceptual primer, but people with specific interests in one aspect or other of speech signal processing may look into other books. I have found it very valuable in clarifying certain concepts and an essential reference for my thesis. Some readers may find this book frustrating in some aspects because they are not familiar with the background of certain topics. It is often best to reread the conceptual portion of those chapters and look for other resources that explain the details of those topics in a more tangible language.

I was skeptical when I started on this book. But this book changed the way I looked a speech processing for ever. Wonderful classic on Speech Processing. I spent many moments with this book and came out with awe and respect for the authors. It is broad in its scope. Thanks IEEE for reissuing this classic. A good book should make you think loud. This one does that job splendidly well.

This is an attempt to cover many aspects of speech processing, including modeling, coding, synthesis, enhancement, and recognition. Since each of the mentioned areas is a thick book on its own, the present book does not and cannot provide in depth coverage. I like some stories told in the book, like the development of the mechanical vocoder. But I find it to be wordy and in many instances, somehow impractical, like the exagerated mathematical treatment of the acoustic tube model. Also, the mathematical notations tend to be awkward. Due to technological advances, many topics contained in this book are already outdated.

I've seen a lot of books on Speech processing, but this one's the best by quite some margin. Rabiner & Schafer's classic could've edged this one out, but it's slightly dated now(1978 was a long time ago!) - it remains a great source for the fundamentals, though. However, this book is uptodate, as well as quite exhaustive in its coverage of the basics. One can get a solid grasp of basic speech processing(eg pitch analysis), synthesis, compression and recognition. The chapters on recognition, especially, are quite impressive,with detailed treatment of all the standard techniques in the field,including Dynamic time warping,Hidden Markov models & Neural networks. Everything from isolated word recognition to large vocabulary continuous speech recognition is touched upon.This book is an ideal starting point for exploring the world of speech processing,which is a very rich area of research and has virtually limitless commercial applications,too.A word of caution though - this is not for the layman.One requires a bit of a background in mathematics,and a little knowledge of digital signal processing won't hurt either.I have only nice things to say about this book.The only possible crib could be the hefty price tag,but then this is typical of books in this field.All in all,it's an excellent textbook,which ought to be read by everyone working in speech processing.