Customer Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Introductory Book to DSP
Comment: This is an excellent introductory book to digital signal processing. It goes with in depth explanation of the concept of DSP. It also touches some of the advances in DSP. Coupled with other advance DSP books, this book provides the basics necessary to understand DSP and move forward to advanced level.
Great Book !!!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Okay, others better
Comment: I bought this book based on the Amazon reviews. However, after reviewing it for about one hour, I decided that it is going back.
The book is not well written, and it is overly verbose. It might be suitable for a high school AP (advanced placement) course, or an engineer who became a manager and lost his ability to understand technical information. But in reality, it will probably just lead you astray.
For example, the section on the exponential averaging filter on pages 432-438 spends too much time describing the filter qualitatively and takes too long to describe its phase and frequency responses. And when it does, it does so using a correct but tedious mathematical technique that is hard to follow and not useful for a practicing engineer.
I cannot say I did an exhaustive search of the book, but I could find little evidence and certainly not enough emphasis on the idea that the frequency response of real world filters can be quickly ascertained by taking the DFT (discrete Fourier transform, using the FFT, the fast Fourier transform algorithm) of the impulse response of FIR (finite impulse response) filter, and in many cases with fixed point IIR filters. Page 159 alludes to this in the case of FIR filters. But the same technique works well for IIR filters that decay to 0 due to finite word length effects.
Section 5.8 covers phase response of FIR filters. I could not find much on the topic related to IIR filters. Glaringly incorrect, section 5.8 states "One of the dominant features of FIR fitlers is their linear phase response that we can demonstrate by way of example." This implies that all FIR filters have linear phase response, but this is incorrect. FIR filters with symmetric coefficients have linear phase response, but other FIR filters do not.
Furthermore, a discussion on why and when linear phase response is important is virtually non-existent, and certainly inadequate.
Working engineers who need to know about DSP would be better off looking for another book on the subject, for example Ifeachor and Jervis's Digital Signal Processing: A Practical Approach, or one of Oppenheim's books if you've already mastered a basic understanding of DSP at some point in the past 10 or 15 years, and need a refresher.
Engineering students would also do well with either of the two alternative books mentioned above.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Your Springboard into the DSP World
Comment: "I'll just say that the future of electronics is DSP, and with this book you will not be left behind." (xii)
My response: DSP is still in its infancy, and there is a lot of potential to grow and organize. With this book, you will not be left too far behind.
Since this book is a popular choice for learning DSP, my comments address DSP in general.
Introductory DSP is a hard subject on which to write a textbook. Think Algebra I. It was the most confusing math class in my secondary education, even though I did end up with A+++. You can't just write the field axioms [various transforms and their properties] and expect students to understand them. You have to explain, and it can get really verbose. A half-hearted attempt to justify its study would do a serious disservice to its actual importance. It can spell a disaster if the author doesn't have a full grasp of the subject material.
_Understanding Digital Signal Processing_ (2004) by Lyons does a pretty good job of explaining the concepts. If you are patient, you will learn many techniques for optimizing your filter designs. It also has some useful points of data analysis, for those experimentalist folks, how to improve SNR, resolution of frequency peaks, etc.
But come on, bring in more technology! We are no longer in the era of Cauchy and Riemann. I appreciate your explicit calculations, but would prefer short codes. Surface plots on z-plane are nice. The whole design process in DSP should have some standardized software, just as in analog circuits (SPICE) and digital VLSI layout (Magic).
The book lacks good organization, especially toward the end. It tends to be a collection of topics, rather than a cohesive story. Modular arithmetic should not be an afterthought, but should be emphasized from the very beginning.
In the end, this book is only an introduction. Because it does its job and DSP is so important, I give the book 4 stars.
Customer Rating:
Summary: wow
Comment: Modern, up-to-date dsp info, this second edition is a must have.
The "Tricks" chapter is outstanding.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Amazing book by an exceptional teacher
Comment: I wouldn't be adding much to other reviews.
A good teacher can make a challenging subject accessible. This is THE book that proves it. It is a very well written introduction/reference to a field that is generally made scary by those who teach it. Any beginning electrical engineer who feels interested in DSP but doubts whether he/she is cut out for it, should read this book. It will dispel their apprehensions.
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