Rating: 
Summary: Not a bad beginners book but.....
Review: ...beware of bugs in the code. This is a good book for an intro to digital sound and sound file formats but the code (at least the stuff involving the windows multimedia API) is rather buggy. Hopefully the 2nd edition will be better.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent audio intro
Review: Covers basics of the generation and perception of sound, then shifts into discussion of the various formats in common use by software engineers and hackers. Every programming concept is illustrated with C++ example code, from which Kientzle builds a reusable framework. This framework is available on a CD that is included with the book. This book serves well as a compendium of audio knowledge scattered around in specs, standards, and papers.I would love to see a future edition with Java bindings to the C++ framework.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed that recording is not covered!
Review: I am SO disappointed in this book! I am a programmer who wants to record .wav files, and from the title you would think this would get at least cursory coverage! But be warned, this book has NOTHING, absolutely zero, about recording! I am keeping the book because of its information on Fourier Transforms, but am back to square one in search of a true programmer's reference book on sound!! Amazon, warn your potential buyers, please!
Rating: 
Summary: This book is an excellent reference for sound formats
Review: I have spent a lot of time trying to find information on many of the topics covered and to find 1 resource that has all information and is well tested is a gold mine. I have recommended that professors use the book in their DSP classes. The source code is easy to follow and compiles without a hitch. It is an excellent resource.
Rating: 
Summary: Good sound format information and overview,
Review: I used this book as the basis for a real time speech program and I found that although the book gave a good overview of the way that Win95 uses sound playback, the code was too complicated. The object oriented nature of the code was a good idea except that it seemed that there was a lot of uneeded code, for example queue implementations were too complex. Also there could have been better coverage given to synchronisation objects like semaphores in the code. Overall quite helpful but the code can be optimised in some places.
Rating:
Summary: Great C++ resource. Not a good academic resource.
Review: The CD included with this book will get you started programming *fast*. But be forewarned, the style of C++ used is written using the latest standard which includes namespaces and STL. You'll need a current C++ compiler with libraries. Kietzle really just tries to plow through the theory so he can cut to describing the included code. And I don't blame him. The inheritence and polymorphism used allows *extreme* flexibility and takes some patience to understand. If you want to *really* understand antialising, sample rates and the Nyquist frequency, then you'd be better off with "The Computer Music Tutorial" (Roads). The book delivers as advertised and makes a great resource for all programmers who have an interest in audio.
Rating: 
Summary: Outdated and Useless Software
Review: This book can be used as a reference toward file formats as applied to sounds. However, I found the software and code examples within the book to be unnecessarily complicated. For instance, the author has a clear obsession to add unnecessary functions toward the API, such as "negotiation" and various levels of abstraction. Under normal circumstances, all parameters (sampling frequency, bits per sample, etc) are known in advance and hence "negotiation" among various sound objects is absurd. I have also found numerious inconsistencies and omissions in the code provided. In Page 42 - Listing 4.6, the author suggests a recursive way to read bytes; nonetheless, if the previous pointer is NULL the code will get into real trouble. In the CD-ROM provided, in order to compile the window player, a key header file is missing: "audiolib.h", I couldn't find it after searching several times. My recommendation is that the material can be used for a quick browse of file formats, but do not get serious in the software solutions because they are not useful.
Rating:
Summary: Not of much use
Review: This book is a reasonable reference for audio file formats. I would not recommend it for much more than that. There's also a feel to the text that implies it was written to supliment the sample code rather than the code suplimenting the text. I much prefer the Sine Wave code from Charles Petzold's 5th edition of "Programming Windows" to the code found here. There is much more clarity in the Petzold code (a simple function that can be compiled in C or C++) than the Kientzle code (too much emphasis in doing everything with classes). I would not recommend this to someone wanting to learn how to do more than write a file player.
Rating:
Summary: Outdated and Useless Software
Review: This is the only book that I've come across that covers any of the trivialities of cross-platform sound programming. Sure there are better books on the various platform APIs, but they don't cover the differences between playing sound on Windows vs Mac. Small things like signed and unsigned data and byte swapping for 16 bit data are covered here. You won't find these things in Petzold's book. I did find a few small problems in the example code, but if you actually read the book, they're easy to spot. If you're writing cross-platform sound code, this book will be very helpful.
Rating:
Summary: Good cross-platform intro to sound
Review: This is the only book that I've come across that covers any of the trivialities of cross-platform sound programming. Sure there are better books on the various platform APIs, but they don't cover the differences between playing sound on Windows vs Mac. Small things like signed and unsigned data and byte swapping for 16 bit data are covered here. You won't find these things in Petzold's book. I did find a few small problems in the example code, but if you actually read the book, they're easy to spot. If you're writing cross-platform sound code, this book will be very helpful.
| 
