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Summary: Very good book...enlightens without dumbing down!!!
Review: I'm a grad student in EE, and have had half-a-dozen DSP classes over the years. Many questions have remained unanswered over this time and I'm happy to say that this book filled in the missing pieces. Judging from the topics Lyons chooses to elucidate, it is obvious that he has traveled this confusing road himself, emerging victorious on the other side of the tunnel. He graciously shares his hard-won information with the reader, shedding light on various ubiquitious DSP confusion causing topics (i.e. convolution, digital filter design methods, DFT/FFT, etc.) If you're a EE that needs to really acquire an intuitive feel for DSP, this book is the answer. He doesn't dumb down the subject, either. Although one can certainly delve deeper (many references are provided), Lyons does a good job of explaining and describing the math. He has a wonderful colloquial style that makes it seem like you're discussing this stuff with a buddy. I can't recommend this book high enough. It's worth several times the purchase price.
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Summary: One of the best
Review: I read this book like a novel. It took much of the unnecessary complexity out of DSP. It is probably one of the best books written on the subject, making it accessible to students, and those in the field alike. I just wish I had this book when I was in school. I highly recommend this beautifully written, well illustrated with figures and examples, a model of a good engineering book. --- Charan Langton
Rating:
Summary: An excellent treatment of the subject; short, sweet, clear.
Review: The use of simple plots and lots of examples makes it easy to follow the author's thought process. His writing style makes an otherwise dry topic enjoyable to read.
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Summary: Great for learning the reasons behind
Review: I had taken a dsp subject during undergraduate course in engineering school. Our lecturer had recommended us a text by Oppenheim et al.- "Signals & Systems", and claimed that the book to be quite informative as introductory text. I don't question that book to be informative, but I doubt it to serve well as an introductory text. For most of us in the class, it definitely doesn't seem to fit as a beginner material, especially we didn't have previous background in signals & systems. If one thinks that, "mathematics" should not meant for understanding an explaination, then most probably he/she would feel difficult to read that book. Same thing go for most of the other signal processing books.I've passed the dsp exam by gobbling up all the mathematics, but without success in understanding the truths (reasons) behind. Since then, whenever I saw any 'unexplainable' maths to 'explain' a signal process, mostly I would just being frightened away, or even stopped from continue reading it. This certainly couldn't satisfy my desire towards learning new knowledge. Then, I decided to take a try on this book. Luckily I did. It is indeed the kind of stuff which should be taught in the first place, especially to students (or engineers) who want to learn dsp for the first time, without too much struggling. This book is understandable, readable, & easy to swallow. Richard Lyons tries avoiding mathematics whenever possible, however if the maths is unavoidable, he will explain it in plain english by giving a "numerical + graphical" example to better visualize it. For example, instead of telling convolution is y(n)=h(k)*x(k), he would further depict the convolution, terms by terms, in the way of y(n) = (1/3) . x(n-2) + (1/3) . x(n-1) + (1/3) . x(n), and putting graphical explaination to aid in better understanding. If you are looking for a book to start taking off from the land of DSP without prior knowledge on it, no doubt this is one of the best books available. If you are to understand the "reasons" behind dsp in simple way, after learning the maths, like me, this is for sure the first recommendation of all. After finishing this book, I can't wait to go for other classical books, like the "discrete-time signal processing" by Oppenheim.
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Summary: Fantastic Book
Review: OK, let me first start out by saying that I am a little biased here since I helped review the new edition, but this is a fantastic book. While this book isn't a total replacement for the standard DSP tomes like Oppenheim and Schafer, this is a text that all DSP engineers should own. The second edition expands on the strong points of the first. The book is written by an engineer for other engineers. The topics are accessible to readers, while not being watered down. Less understood, but extremely important topics such as quadrature processing and Hilbert transforms have expanded coverage in this edition. The best improvement to this edition is the vastly expanded chapter on DSP Tricks. The tricks are practical applications of DSP theory. These tricks usually are not taught in school, and are often not well known. The number of pages devoted to tricks has doubled to over 100, and unlike other books, cover a broad range of topics. Application areas cover audio processing, digital communications, simulation, analysis, and others. In summary, you will not be disappointed with this book.
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Summary: Well written. High quality.
Review: Understanding Digital Signal Processing (UDSP), by Richard Lyons, is a high quality textbook and a good place to begin studies in DSP.
As a patent attorney who focuses on writing patents, I often learn new technologies in a short time. For every patent in a technology new to me, I read many books and reviews searching for the best resource to get me up to speed and back to billing. Having gone through this process many times, I appreciate well written textbooks, but typically see substandard texts with common pitfalls.
In my experience many textbook authors (writers generally) develop their books with a common error... incomplete development.
By incomplete development I mean two things: (1) not including the proper foundation for every step forward, and (2) poor organization.
The result of each of these is a reader who must put forth extra effort to connect the dots, or worse, to actually have to fill in holes themselves in order to connect the dots. Similar to a good teacher, a good writer must anticipate potential hangups, and develop their material to alleviate these potential hangups.
Richard Lyons, beyond clearly understanding the topics in UDSP, develops each topic well. The result it a good textbook that makes certain DSP topics simple.
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Summary: One of the best technical books I've read
Review: I'll agree with the other glowing reviews here. This is one of the finest technical books I've ever read. It does a really great job of explaining concepts like the FFT so you can really understand them. A great introduction!
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Summary: Wonderful Book for the DSP Beginner
Review: Rick's book sails the high sea of DSP books and stands out as a classic, in my opinion. Rick's excellent down-to-earth teaching style is mirrored in this book with his written explanation of DSP theory. A problem many authors have is that of skimming over detailed explanations using "clearly", "it can be shown", or "It is left to the reader as an exercise" instead thus leaving the student frustrated. Not Rick. Rick takes the time to guide the reader through numerical exercises in great detail leaving the reader with a sense of accomplishment. A particularly interesting topic that is covered in this book lacking in detail in others is that of band limiting (over sampling) DSP theory with good diagrams. I personally used Rick's book to come up to speed in DSP adaptive disk drive read channel VLSI IC testing techniques with great results. The typical DSP topics are covered (sampling, DFT, filters) without graduate level math. Rick covers single side-band modulation; a topic I found handy in HAM radio. But wait! There's more! The second edition of this book improves upon the first. Finally, note that the book does require that you understand calculus (integration, summation, and other typical higher level math skills) but at the level of a college senior. If you have the fortunate opportunity to attend one of Rick's classes, or meet Rick at a conference, tell him Dave sent you. Rick's book is an asset to any serious DSP student's library.
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