Our Plan

A logical organization for this book would be along the lines above, starting with Newton's laws, differential equations, digitization methods, and so on through the various methods. However, we proceed instead as follows:

1. Delay-line and digital-waveguide acoustic modeling
   1. Time-invariant case (acoustic multipath, artificial reverberation)
   2. Time-varying case (phasing, flanging, chorus, Leslie, vibrating strings and air columns)
2. Impedance modeling and equivalent circuits
3. Finite differences and transfer functions
4. Application examples
5. Appendices on C++ software, history, Newtonian physics, digital waveguide theory details, more about finite difference schemes, and wave digital filters

The reason for this ordering is that it starts out really simple, with no calculus required, and plenty of signal processing and practical applications along the way. It is easily possible to fill a first course without reaching impedance models (which require calculus and frequency-domain facility for both continuous- and discrete-time systems). The appendices provide both supporting and relatively advanced material.

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Subsections

• A Simplified Starting Theory

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Next: A Simplified Starting Theory

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About the Author: Julius Orion Smith III
Julius Smith's background is in electrical engineering (BS Rice 1975, PhD Stanford 1983). He is presently Professor of Music and Associate Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering at Stanford's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), teaching courses and pursuing research related to signal processing applied to music and audio systems. See http://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/ for details.