Elements of Acoustic Phonetics

This book is a major achievement from the pedagogical point of view. For instance, Discrete Fourier Transform basic principles are clearly explained in chapter 10 using intuitive arguments (correlation and orthogonality). The same happens with other tough subjects for those studying acoustic phonetics, like LPC (chapter 11). And some explanations come with simple algorithms, intended to illustrate what is being discussed. But, on the other side, the book has some (minor) flaws: in chapter 2, p. 18, the author gives the simple pendulum as an example of a system where frequency of oscillation is independent of the initial conditions (in this case, the initial displacement angle). This is wrong. It is approximately correct just for small angles. For angles close to 90 degrees, the error comes close to 18%; chapter 6 does one of the most common (and, therefore, one that should not be present in a book for beginners) mistakes in acoustics: taking sound power instead of sound pressure when talking about loudness; there is an excessive number of typos in chapter 11. But apart from that (which makes me give it 4 instead of 5 stars) it is an excellent start for students or professionals (my case), either from linguistics, engineering (my case) or medical sciences, in need for an introduction to this fascinating subject.

This book is great although very basic. It is very understandable to someone who knows little about speech acoustics but a little about musical acoustics. It is easy to read and understand

Major improvements are using the source-filter in place of spring resonance model and fine tutorials on digital speech processing. An excellent first text for the student phonetician. For more advanced students use my 1999 text. J.M. Pickett.