The Scientist & Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing

This is a great book and it is not a stretch (much of one anyway) to compare it with the classic Feynman text on Physics. I struggled thru Oppenheim’s text and his video lectures from 30 years ago. Oppenheim sometimes skirts over the subtle (in the video lectures anyway) and over emphasizes the more straightforwardly obvious. Oppenheim’s text is often less than clear and the excesses of explanatory verbiage actually muddy the concepts further. The end result in the Oppenheim book is that while specifics may be comprehensible, you never get a good intuitive grasp of the whole discipline of DSP. Smith’s book, on the other hand, starts gradually, building first on an intuitive and practical understanding of the subject before delving into the complex and confusing mathematics.This text is hugely successful in conveying a clear overview of the whole subject in the way Oppenheim’s is not. Smith’s book is perhaps less mathematically rigorous than a typical DSP textbook but you will have a good intuitive grasp of what DSP is really trying to achieve by the time the math comes in. I personally find the math less intimidating than trying to combine the mathematical with the practical. The math is subtle but not formidable. What is hard is understanding the math well enough and having a good enough intuitive grasp of the subject to apply the mathematical tools in unfamiliar situations. Smith achieves this I think as well as anyone could.I think this book combined with the Schaum DSP outline book will give you as good an introduction to this field as you are likely to get. Highly recommended.

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.

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.

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 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.

Even thought this book is available online, after reading a few sections me and my fiance liked it so much we wanted to support the author and buy a hardcover copy as well.It covers a range of DSP topics in a way that is very easy to understand but with enough details to be useful and applicable. I was not taking this for a class, just found the topic fascinating and the presentation in this book makes it an enjoyable read. For example, in the section on how visual images can be processed, there are also details on how our eyes process visual information and how the electronics have parallel functionality. Another example of the kind of presentation I like: the edge detection section has pictures to demonstrate transforms that can be done on images and instead of just spewing out the pure math, the author tries to give readers a little more intuition into which variables can be tuned to what effect. I wish all textbooks were written like this.