Learning DSP

[Magnus Danielson]

>>>>> "JR" == Josh Rowe <jitter at fortwayne.infi.net> writes:

 JR> Hello all!

Hi Josh (from all of me ;)!

 JR> I have heard people say that using a math program like Maple or whatnot
 JR> makes learning DSP techniques easier.  If so, is there a math program that
 JR> is particularly well suited for DSP learning?  Also, does anybody have any
 JR> favorite books on DSP that they would recommend?

Maple isn't well suited. It has its benefits on formulas but not that
well for DSP emulation...

A tool that I have been using for this is Octave
(see http://bevo.che.wisc.edu/octave).

Octave have for some reason this little feature that you may load and
save audio files and you may also play and record sound from the audio
I/O.

You can make plots and easilly make filter dimensioning formulas as
part of your simulation run. You can plot, do Fourier analysis
(FFT/DFT) and many other usefull things.

Octave also have direct support filter simulation and analysis, but
you may need to do some work to do what you want.

Octave is a free Matlab clone and exist for Linux, Digital Unix,
HP-UX, SunOS, OS/2, and Windows NT/95 and is ofcourse available as
source.

I have myself prototyped DSPs in Octave, PLLs infact.

Mapping between a Octave model to a real DSP can be easy if some care
is taken.

Octave may not be the quickest way possible for the execution, but you
may change things and try it out very quickly and this is as important
when you are prototyping.

My favorite book for DSPs is "Theory and Application of Digital Signal
Processing" by Rabiner and Gold from 1975. This is reference book
which is quite well written which shown its strength througth the
years.

Another book which I recommend is "Filtering in the Time and Frequency
Domains" by Blinchikoff and Zverev. This book goes through analogue
filters very well and its description about digital filter is keeping
the same high level. Great book for learning how to really do the math
behind filters.

Cheers,
Magnus