Rick Lyons <R.Lyons@_bogus_ieee.org> wrote: (snip)> Then I read that book's single Customer Review. > Tim, I'm willing to bet a six-pack of Pilsner > Urquell that the single Customer Review is > fraudulent. That is, I believe the review was > posted by someone who is somehow connected with > the publication of that book.I went to a CS talk last year on someone using machine learning to detect fake reviews. At one point during the talk, there were two hotel reviews that the audience was supposed to vote for which was real, which was fake. I got it right, but most didn't. One of the hotels offered guests a goldfish bowl that they could take to their room. That seemed too strange for a fake reviewer to ever think of, and would be pretty obvious when one got there.> The review is beautifully well-written, too beautiful. > What reader would write that the book contains, > "...the wisdom of an accomplished and richly > experienced lab technician"?A richly experienced lab technician!> Engineers don't write like that, but marketing > people do. Yep, I think I'm making a safe bet.Even when they are not supposed customer reviews, you have to be careful when reading anything written by marketing.> I was badly burned once by believing the Amazon > reviews of a signal processing book. So now > I read those reviews *VERY* carefully!Yes, I like to look over books in the library, before deciding to buy them. But if they are a well known author, and a good price, I might buy anyway. -- glen
Another new signal processing book
Started by ●August 5, 2014
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:> Rick Lyons <R.Lyons@_bogus_ieee.org> wrote: > > (snip) > >> Some people believe it's not possible to explain signal >> processing to non-engineers. I've attempted to prove them >> wrong. Was I successful? Who knows. > > Hmm. I remember when CDs first came out, and digital was supposed > to be the greatest thing. Everyone wanted DDD, and this replaced > the supposed great digital mastered LPs. >It took a while for people to actually buy digital multitracks and it took even longer to figure out the meters on them. A Mitsubishi DASH machine was extremely expensive when they first came out; the Sony was even moreso. <gossip> A World Famous Producer who shall remain completely nameless is alleged to love a certain make of analog tape machine because he can bury the meters going to tape and it still works. </gossip> Try that with digital. People did. Didn't work out.> And not too much later, the people who hate the digital sound, > and want everything analog, especially if it has vacuum tubes > in it. >A lot of early digital machinery was badly done. Oversampling converters came later. One of the '90s DAT machines had legendary bad converters. Stereos are furniture. I am old enough to remember when they were sold that way, and old enough to remember when the furniture and electronics were sold seperately. I learned about furniture selling thusly: I bought a couch at a warehouse-ey looking place off the main roads. Over the cash register was a sticky note that said "G.T.F.M." - Get The <expletive deleted> Money", I figured. It turned out to be a crappy couch. You're better off with the places that charge a bit more.> But most don't know even the first thing about sampling and digital > audio, and yet make claims as to how good or bad it is. >It's not intuitive.>> Here's a brief description of our new book: >> http://www.newtechreview.com/newtechreview/bloginfo.asp?ID=3867 > > -- glen >-- Les Cargill
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
On Tue, 05 Aug 2014 17:11:02 -0700, Rick Lyons wrote:> Hey Tim, > I took a look at the Amazon page for Kim Fowler's > "Electronic Instrument Design: Architecting for the Life Cycle" book. > It looks like an interesting book. Not interesting enough to spend > $145, but interesting nonetheless. > > Then I read that book's single Customer Review. > Tim, I'm willing to bet a six-pack of Pilsner Urquell that the single > Customer Review is fraudulent. That is, I believe the review was posted > by someone who is somehow connected with the publication of that book. > > The review is beautifully well-written, too beautiful. > What reader would write that the book contains, "...the wisdom of an > accomplished and richly experienced lab technician"? > > Engineers don't write like that, but marketing people do. Yep, I think > I'm making a safe bet. > > I was badly burned once by believing the Amazon reviews of a signal > processing book. So now I read those reviews *VERY* carefully! > > [-Rick-]Perhaps a really happy engineer who got help from his wife in Marketing? I dunno. Kim's a solid guy, though, so you may not want to grade him DOWN for the review. -- Tim Wescott Wescott Design Services http://www.wescottdesign.com
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
On 08/06/2014 08:42 AM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:> Rick Lyons <R.Lyons@_bogus_ieee.org> wrote: > > (snip) > >> Some people believe it's not possible to explain signal >> processing to non-engineers. I've attempted to prove them >> wrong. Was I successful? Who knows. > > Hmm. I remember when CDs first came out, and digital was supposed > to be the greatest thing. Everyone wanted DDD, and this replaced > the supposed great digital mastered LPs. > > And not too much later, the people who hate the digital sound, > and want everything analog, especially if it has vacuum tubes > in it. > > But most don't know even the first thing about sampling and digital > audio, and yet make claims as to how good or bad it is.What they mostly don't know about is themselves. They hear differences and never think to themselves "is that the equipment, or is that me?". It takes a deep lack of self awareness to be an "audiophile".>> Here's a brief description of our new book: >> http://www.newtechreview.com/newtechreview/bloginfo.asp?ID=3867 > > -- glen >Regards, Steve
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
On 08/06/2014 10:18 AM, Les Cargill wrote:> A lot of early digital machinery was badly done. Oversampling converters > came later. One of the '90s DAT machines had legendary bad converters.I never found an early CD player that didn't sound truly awful. I tried a number of early ones in an AB comparison with vinyl, and they all sounded far worse than the vinyl - although the lack of surface noise was a wonderful thing :-). I don't think consumer CD players started to do what they should until the first generation with sigma-delta converters. Thankfully studio equipment had been using much better converters since way before the first CD players appeared. A lot of early digital recordings are very good. As far as I know all the DAT machines used sigma-delta converters for both ADC and DAC. However, some had bizarrely low oversampling ratios. There was something really crooked about the spec sheets for those machines. Regards, Steve
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
On 08/06/2014 03:07 AM, Rick Lyons wrote:> > Hi Guys, > Because Tim Wescott posted a message regarding a > new book to which he contributed, I feel emboldened to > mention that there's a new DSP book that I and my > co-author Lee Fugal just finished last month. > Our new book is titled: "The Essential Guide to Digital > Signal Processing" published by Prentice Hall. > > Prentice Hall has a series of books that describe technical > subjects (e.g., Semiconductors, RF and Wireless, etc.) to > non-engineers. Our book attempts to explain the fundamentals > of DSP to non-engineers. (Of course, to explain what is > this mysterious thing called a "digital signal" our book > begins by describing what is an analog signal.) > > Some people believe it's not possible to explain signal > processing to non-engineers. I've attempted to prove them > wrong. Was I successful? Who knows. > > Here's a brief description of our new book: > http://www.newtechreview.com/newtechreview/bloginfo.asp?ID=3867 > > [-Rick-]Strange title. It gives no indication that its not for DSP engineers. I guess going the other way and calling it DSP for Dummies would have been worse. :-\ Steve
Reply by ●August 5, 20142014-08-05
On 08/06/2014 08:11 AM, Rick Lyons wrote:> > > Hey Tim, > I took a look at the Amazon page for Kim Fowler's > "Electronic Instrument Design: Architecting for > the Life Cycle" book. It looks like an interesting > book. Not interesting enough to spend $145, but > interesting nonetheless. > > Then I read that book's single Customer Review. > Tim, I'm willing to bet a six-pack of Pilsner > Urquell that the single Customer Review is > fraudulent. That is, I believe the review was > posted by someone who is somehow connected with > the publication of that book. > > The review is beautifully well-written, too beautiful. > What reader would write that the book contains, > "...the wisdom of an accomplished and richly > experienced lab technician"? > > Engineers don't write like that, but marketing > people do. Yep, I think I'm making a safe bet. > > I was badly burned once by believing the Amazon > reviews of a signal processing book. So now > I read those reviews *VERY* carefully! > > [-Rick-]Even honest reviews can be completely misleading. If the reviewer is the wrong audience for the material it often gets a scathing review, while the reviewer should probably just think "that's not for me" and move on. I Googled for a venison recipe at the weekend, and choose one with lots of 5 star recommendations and a couple of 1 stars. The 1 star reviews were from people who don't like the gamey taste of venison. Steve
Reply by ●August 6, 20142014-08-06
On 08/06/2014 06:34 AM, bellda2005@gmail.com wrote:> On Tuesday, August 5, 2014 3:07:06 PM UTC-4, Rick Lyons wrote: >> Hi Guys, >> >> Because Tim Wescott posted a message regarding a >> >> new book to which he contributed, I feel emboldened to >> >> mention that there's a new DSP book that I and my >> >> co-author Lee Fugal just finished last month. >> >> Our new book is titled: "The Essential Guide to Digital >> >> Signal Processing" published by Prentice Hall. >> >> >> >> Prentice Hall has a series of books that describe technical >> >> subjects (e.g., Semiconductors, RF and Wireless, etc.) to >> >> non-engineers. Our book attempts to explain the fundamentals >> >> of DSP to non-engineers. (Of course, to explain what is >> >> this mysterious thing called a "digital signal" our book >> >> begins by describing what is an analog signal.) >> >> >> >> Some people believe it's not possible to explain signal >> >> processing to non-engineers. I've attempted to prove them >> >> wrong. Was I successful? Who knows. >> >> >> >> Here's a brief description of our new book: >> >> http://www.newtechreview.com/newtechreview/bloginfo.asp?ID=3867 >> >> >> >> [-Rick-] > > Oh Rick! > > Non-technical managers knowing anything about DSP will only lead to unrealistic requirements and schedules, and their feeling that if they can understand it, it should pay less. > > PLEASE reconsider. > > Dirk >An excellent example of the dangers of the Dunning-Kruger effect. :-) Steve
Reply by ●August 6, 20142014-08-06
Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> writes:> [pining about early digital equipment snipped...]I heard back in that day (to be taken with a good bit of caution) that the problem with some of the early CDs was in their mastering, namely, that the RIAA equalization was not inverted, thus the overly bright/harsh sound of CDs. But then to counter that, I personally A/B compared a first-generation Sony CD player to one about 3 years newer and heard a definite improvement (or thought I did - it wasn't blind). -- Randy Yates Digital Signal Labs http://www.digitalsignallabs.com
Reply by ●August 6, 20142014-08-06
On 8/5/14 10:50 PM, Steve Underwood wrote:> On 08/06/2014 10:18 AM, Les Cargill wrote: >> A lot of early digital machinery was badly done. Oversampling converters >> came later. One of the '90s DAT machines had legendary bad converters. > > > I never found an early CD player that didn't sound truly awful. I tried > a number of early ones in an AB comparison with vinyl, and they all > sounded far worse than the vinyl - although the lack of surface noise > was a wonderful thing :-). I don't think consumer CD players started to > do what they should until the first generation with sigma-delta > converters.it wasn't just the early CD players, but also the early CDs. some of the early recordings were with 14-bit ADCs. i remember in 1989 Stan Lipshitz found a CD recording of a symphony that had a bad bit higher than the LSB. you could hear it toggle during flute solos or other quiet moments in the song. maybe it was a dead zone. quite nasty. anyway, with 16-bit and 44.1 kHz carved into stone (sorta prematurely), it was both amazing and fortunate that, with the use of dither, they were able to squeeze more dynamic range outa CDs without having to change the format and obsolete the earlier pressed CDs. there is even a way to recover the 4.77 dB lost with additive dither by subtracting it out and playback through a more-than-16 bit DAC.> Thankfully studio equipment had been using much better > converters since way before the first CD players appeared.i dunno about that. 16-bit conventional (like from Analogic) were what i was seeing in 1982.> A lot of early digital recordings are very good.and some were very bad.> As far as I know all the DAT machines used sigma-delta converters for > both ADC and DAC.the *early* studio DATs? really?> However, some had bizarrely low oversampling ratios. > There was something really crooked about the spec sheets for those > machines.there is still a lot of crooked specsmanship goin on. -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
