Often, books about signal analysis and processing are either highly theoretical with high-level mathematics or contain oversimplified explanations which cannot answer the questions of how and why adequately. In this book, the writer attempts to explain the theory from a practical viewpoint, using a common-sense way of thinking. The theoretical principles described are mainly applied to speech sounds but the complex nature of these sounds makes this approach suitable to audio signals in general.

The book contains mathematical formulas, but sparsely used, serving as conclusions of the preceding explanations in ‘normal’ language. The more extended mathematical manipulations can be found in the appendices.

The text is accompanied by a great number of figures, resulting in a very comprehensible book about this subject, which usually is regarded as complicated. In addition, a number of free “DEMO scripts” can be downloaded and run in the free-accessible sound analysis and manipulation program “Praat”, which makes it possible to experience the audio outputs of the many manipulations explained.