Convergence in Broadcast and Communications Media offers concise and accurate information for engineers and technicians tackling products and systems combining audio, video, data processing and communications. Without adequate fundamental knowledge of the core technologies, products could be flawed or even fail. John Watkinson has provided a definitive professional guide, designed as a standard point of reference for engineers, whether you are from an audio, video, computer or communications background.
Without assuming any background and starting from first principles, the four core technologies of image reproduction, sound reproduction, data processing and communications are described. Covering everything from digital fundamentals to conversion methods, sound and image technologies, compression techniques, digital coding principles, storage devices and the latest communications systems, the book shows how these technologies operate together and the necessary conversions that take place between them. Acronyms and buzzwords are introduced only after their purpose has been described in plain English - as the book serves to give a reliable grasp of the fundamentals. The criteria involved in determining image and sound quality are based on a thorough treatment of the human senses, a unique description of how motion portrayal works in managing systems.
John Watkinson is an international consultant in audio video and data recording. He is a Fellow of the AES, a member of the British Computer Society and a chartered information systems practitioner. He presents lectures, seminars, conference papers and training courses worldwide and writes for many industry magazines. His other booksfor Focal Press are widely acknowledged as standard reference works and industry bibles'. John is author of MPEG2, The Art of Digital Video and the Art of Digital Audio, An Introduction to Digital Video, An Introduction to Digital Audio, The Art of Sound Reproduction, Television Fundamentals, Co-author of The Digital Interface Handbook and Contributor to The Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook.
A fundamental approach to audio, video, data processing and communications systemsWritten for engineers of any discipline (audio, video, computers, communications)Demonstrates audio and video principles alongside the essential communications technologies: MPEG transport streams, DVB, Networks, Telephony, ADSL, Firewire, ATM

How can we engineer systems capable of "cocktail party" listening?

Human listeners are able to perceptually segregate one sound source from an acoustic mixture, such as a single voice from a mixture of other voices and music at a busy cocktail party. How can we engineer "machine listening" systems that achieve this perceptual feat?

Albert Bregman's book Auditory Scene Analysis, published in 1990, drew an analogy between the perception of auditory scenes and visual scenes, and described a coherent framework for understanding the perceptual organization of sound. His account has stimulated much interest in computational studies of hearing. Such studies are motivated in part by the demand for practical sound separation systems, which have many applications including noise-robust automatic speech recognition, hearing prostheses, and automatic music transcription. This emerging field has become known as computational auditory scene analysis (CASA).

Computational Auditory Scene Analysis: Principles, Algorithms, and Applications provides a comprehensive and coherent account of the state of the art in CASA, in terms of the underlying principles, the algorithms and system architectures that are employed, and the potential applications of this exciting new technology. With a Foreword by Bregman, its chapters are written by leading researchers and cover a wide range of topics including: Estimation of multiple fundamental frequenciesFeature-based and model-based approaches to CASASound separation based on spatial locationProcessing for reverberant environmentsSegregation of speech and musical signalsAutomatic speech recognition in noisy environmentsNeural and perceptual modeling of auditory organization

The text is written at a level that will be accessible to graduate students and researchers from related science and engineering disciplines. The extensive bibliography accompanying each chapter will also make this book a valuable reference source. A web site accompanying the text, http: //www.casabook.org, features software tools and sound demonstrations.

Optimal Audio and Video Reproduction at Home is a comprehensive guide that will help every reader set up a modern audio-video system in a small room such as a home theater or studio control room. Verdult covers everything the reader needs to know to optimize the reproduction of multichannel audio and high-resolution video. The book provides concrete advice on equipment setup, display calibration, loudspeaker positioning, room acoustics, and much more. Detailed, easy-to-grasp explanations of the underlying principles ensure the reader will make the right choices, find alternatives, and separate the rigid from the more flexible requirements to achieve the best possible results.

Described as "the most comprehensive book on digital audio to date," it is widely acclaimed as an industry "bible." Covering the very latest developments in digital audio technology, it provides an thorough introduction to the theory as well as acting as an authoritative and comprehensive professional reference source. Everything you need is here from the fundamental principles to the latest applications, written in an award-winning style with clear explanations from first principles.

New material covered includes internet audio, PC audio technology, DVD, MPEG audio compression, digital audio broadcasting and audio networks.
Whether you are in the field of audio engineering, sound recording, music technology, broadcasting and communications media or audio design and installation, this book has it all. Written by a leading international audio specialist, who conducts professional seminars and workshops around the world, the book has been road tested for many years by professional seminar attendees and students to ensure their needs are taken into account, and all the right information is covered.
This new edition now includes:
Internet audio
PC Audio technology
DVD
MPEG Audio compression
Digital Audio Broadcasting
Audio networks
Digital audio professionals will find everything they need here, from the fundamental principles to the latest applications, written in an award-winning style with clear explanations from first principles.
John Watkinson is an international consultant in audio, video and data recording. He is a Fellow of the AES, a member of the British Computer Society and a chartered information systems practitioner. He presentslectures, seminars, conference papers and training courses worldwide. He is the author of many other Focal Press books, including: the Kraszna-Krausz award winning MPEG-2; The Art of Digital Audio; An Introduction to Digital Video; The Art of Sound Reproduction; An Introduction to Digital Audio; TV Fundamentals and Audio for Television. He is also co-author, with Francis Rumsey, of The Digital Interface Handbook, and contributor to the Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook, 3rd edition.
-The 'Bible' of Digital Audio
-Get everything you need on digital audio in just one book
-Gain a thorough understanding of all the latest technology

Described as "the most comprehensive book on digital audio to date", it is widely acclaimed as an industry "bible". Covering the very latest developments in digital audio technology, it provides an thorough introduction to the theory as well as acting as an authoritative and comprehensive professional reference source. Everything you need is here from the fundamental principles to the latest applications, written in an award-winning style with clear explanations from first principles. New material covered includes internet audio, PC audio technology, DVD, MPEG audio compression, digital audio broadcasting and audio networks. Whether you are in the field of audio engineering, sound recording, music technology, broadcasting and communications media or audio design and installation, this book has it all. Written by a leading international audio specialist, who conducts professional seminars and workshops around the world, the book has been road tested for many years by professional seminar attendees and students to ensure their needs are taken into account, and all the right information is covered. This new edition now includes: Internet audio PC Audio technology DVD MPEG Audio compression Digital Audio Broadcasting Audio networks Digital audio professionals will find everything they need here, from the fundamental principles to the latest applications, written in an award-winning style with clear explanations from first principles. John Watkinson is an international consultant in audio, video and data recording. He is a Fellow of the AES, a member of the British Computer Society and a chartered information systems practitioner. He presents lectures, seminars, conference papers and training courses worldwide. He is the author of many other Focal Press books, including: the Kraszna-Krausz award winning MPEG-2; The Art of Digital Audio; An Introduction to Digital Video; The Art of Sound Reproduction; An Introduction to Digital Audio; TV Fundamentals and Audio for Television. He is also co-author, with Francis Rumsey, of The Digital Interface Handbook, and contributor to the Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook, 3rd edition.

This book explains the key technologies of speech synthesis and focuses on the research performed in Japan over the period of 1987-1994 with emphasis on text-to-speech (TTS). It describes problems and solutions unique to Japanese TTS.

A comprehensive reference on the exciting growth area of spoken dialogs with computers, this text describes the components of a computer-based spoken dialog system, and will prove invaluable to researchers in industry and academia working on speech communication systems and for applications developers. This state-of-the-art book reviews the complete chain from microphone to speech synthesis. It provides methods, models, and algorithms for building a working system. Renato De Mori is coauthor of each chapter ensuring coherence and homogeneity throughout the text.
Spoken Dialogs with Computers covers in detail: transducers and microphone arrays, speech analysis and transformation, acoustic modeling and model training, language modeling, and knowledge integration for automatic speech recognition (ASR). The book also presents generation of word hypotheses, speaker adaptation, robustness and telephone application, use of syntactic and semantic knowledge, speech interpretation and dialog strategies, speech generation, and software system architectures for practical implementation.
Key Features
* All the necessary methods and models are provided for building a working systems and there is clear algorithmic presentation of the important components
* A section on automatic interpretation allows the building of a database query system in spoken language
* The book will be invaluable to researchers in industry and academia working on speech communication systems and for application developers in industry

Corpus Annotation gives an up-to-date picture of this fascinating new area of research, and will provide essential reading for newcomers to the field as well as those already involved in corpus annotation. Early chapters introduce the different levels and techniques of corpus annotation. Later chapters deal with software developments, applications, and the development of standards for the evaluation of corpus annotation. While the book takes detailed account of research world-wide, its focus is particularly on the work of the UCREL (University Centre for Computer Corpus Research on Language) team at Lancaster University, which has been at the forefront of developments in the field of corpus annotation since its beginnings in the 1970s.

Computers are increasingly able to mimic abilities we often think of as exclusively human - memory, decision-making and now, speech. A new generation of speech recognition systems can make at least some attempt at understanding what is said to them and can respond accordingly. These systems are coming into daily use for home banking, for airline flights enquiries and for placing orders over the telephone and are fast becoming more powerful and more pervasive. Using data taken from a major, European Union funded project on speech understanding, the SunDial project, this book shows how this data may be analyzed to yield important conclusions about the organization of both human-human and human-computer information dialogues. It describes the Wizard-of-Oz method of collecting speech dialogues from people who believe they are interacting with a speech understanding system before that system has been fully designed or built and it shows how the resulting dialogues may be analyzed to guide further design. This book provides detailed and comparative studies of human and human-computer speech dialogues, including analyses of opening and closing sequences and turn-taking.

Active crossovers are used by almost every sound reinforcement system and every recording studio monitoring set-up; but the use of active crossovers is rapidly expanding. This new edition, presents all the updates to loudspeaker technology and crossover design. The edition expands on loudspeaker configurations and design issues, sound reinforcement issues, more on lowpass and highpass filters, and may other filters. This new edition is a must read for anyone wanting comprehensive practical knowledge.

This textbook presents an introduction to signal processing for audio applications. The author's approach posits that math is at the heart of audio processing and that it should not be simplified. He thus retains math as the core of signal processing and includes concepts of difference equations, convolution, and the Fourier Transform. Each of these is presented in a context where they make sense to the student and can readily be applied to build artifacts. Each chapter in the book builds on the previous ones, building a linear, coherent story. The book starts with a definition of sound and goes on to discuss digital audio signals, filters, The Fourier Transform, audio effects, spatial effects, audio equalizers, dynamic range control, and pitch estimation. The exercises in each chapter cover the application of the concepts to audio signals. The exercises are made specifically for Pure Data (Pd) although traditional software, such as MATLAB, can be used. The book is intended for students in media technology bachelor programs. The book is based on material the author developed teaching on the topic over a number of years.

DJ Skills: The Essential Guide to Mixing & Scratching is the most comprehensive, up to date approach to DJing ever produced. With insights from top club, mobile, and scratch DJs, the book includes many teaching strategies developed in the Berklee College of Music prototype DJ lab. From scratching and mixing skills to the latest trends in DVD and video mixing this book gives you access to all the tools, tips and techniques you need. Topics like hand position are taught in a completely new way, and close-up photos of famous DJ's hands are featured. As well as the step-by-step photos the book includes downloadable resources to demonstrate techniques. This book is perfect for intermediate and advanced DJs looking to improve their skills in both the analogue and digital domain.

New to this edition: * Learn how many Hollywood techniques--previously impractical on video--can help solve problems on smaller productions * Expanded cookbook recipes section * Technically updated throughout Make your soundtracks as good as your pictures with this compendium of professional audio techniques that can be adapted to desktop post. Specializing in sound after the shoot, this book features many practical examples, cookbook recipes, and tutorials. Audio theory, when necessary, is presented in plain English with plenty of visual analogies. FAQs, full explanations, and from-the-trenches tips address the complete range of processes from wiring and hardware to testing the final mix. The downloadable resources features platform-independent diagnostics, demonstrations, and tutorial tracks. Novices will learn how to improve their soundtrack--even after the actors have gone home. Experienced producers will learn how to solve technical and creative problems quickly. You'll get recipes and step-by-step instructions on how to: * build an efficient and reliable audio post setup * plan and budget a good soundtrack * get sound into your NLE without losing quality or sync * edit voices and music * record Foley and ADR * find music and use it effectively * find and create your own sound effects * shape sounds with equalization, reverb, noise reduction, and more * produce the final mix * test the final product for various media Please visit the author's website for additional resources: http://www.dplay.com/book/app2e/

From Demo to Delivery: The Process of Production discusses each stage of the typical music production process from start to finish. Beginning with the creation and development of the composition and song production, the book then traces the process from the recording, mixing and mastering stages through to marketing and distribution. This book is a must read for anyone who wants to learn the pro techniques involved in creating music from start to finish. Packed with essential information, including signposts to other sources of information at the end of each chapter, From Demo to Delivery provides a map for musicians, semi-pro and aspiring producers, engineers and music professionals interested in learning how music makes it from the an idea to the page to the studio to a demo and into the hands of the market and beyond.Check out the book's website - http://demo2delivery.com/

Major Label Mastering: Professional Mastering Process distills 25 years of mastering experience at Capitol Records into practical understandings and reliable systems. Containing unparalleled insights, this book reveals the mastering tricks and techniques used by Evren Goeknar at one of the world's most notable record labels. Beginning with the requisite competencies every Mastering Engineer must develop, Major Label Mastering delves into the particulars of the mastering studio, as well as fundamental mastering tools. Included among these tools is The Five Step Mastering Process, a rigorously tested system that equips the practitioner to successfully and confidently master a project to exacting standards of audio fidelity. Covering all bases, the book discusses both macro and micro considerations: from mindset approach and connecting with clients down to detailed guidelines for processing audio, advanced methods, and audio restoration. Each chapter ends with exercises intended to deepen understanding and skill, or to supplement course study. Suitable for all levels, this is a unique resource for students, artists, and recording and Mastering Engineers alike. Major Label Mastering is supplemented by digital resources including audio examples and video tutorials.

Immersive Sound: The Art and Science of Binaural and Multi-Channel Audio provides a comprehensive guide to multi-channel sound. With contributions from leading recording engineers, researchers, and industry experts, Immersive Sound includes an in-depth description of the physics and psychoacoustics of spatial audio as well as practical applications. Chapters include the history of 3D sound, binaural reproduction over headphones and loudspeakers, stereo, surround sound, height channels, object-based audio, soundfield (ambisonics), wavefield synthesis, and multi-channel mixing techniques. Knowledge of the development, theory, and practice of spatial and multi-channel sound is essential to those advancing the research and applications in the rapidly evolving fields of 3D sound recording, augmented and virtual reality, gaming, film sound, music production, and post-production.

A digital interface is the technology that allows interconnectivity between multiple pieces of equipment. In other words hardware devices can communicate with each other and accept audio and video material in a variety of forms. The Digital Interface Handbook is a thoroughly detailed manual for those who need to get to grips with digital audio and video systems. Francis Rumsey and John Watkinson bring together their combined experience to shed light on the differences between audio interfaces and show how to make devices 'talk to each' in the digital domain despite their subtle differences. They also include detailed coverage of all the regularly used digital video interfaces. New information included in this third edition: dedicated audio interfaces, audio over computer network interfaces and revised material on practical audio interfacing and synchronisation.

If you've ever handled live sound, you know the recipe for creating quality live sound requires many steps. Your list of ingredients, shall we say, requires an understanding of sound and how it behaves, the know-how to effectively use a sound system), and the knowledge to choose and use your gear well. Add a dash of miking ability, stir in a pinch of thinking on your feet for when your system starts to hum or the vocals start to feed back, and mix. In practice, there really is no "recipe" for creating a quality performance. Instead, musicians and engineers who effectively use sound systems have a wealth of knowledge that informs their every move before and during a live performance. You can slowly gather that knowledge over years of live performance, or you can speed up the process with The SOS Guide to Live Sound. With these pages, you get practical advice that will allow you to accomplish your live-sound goals in every performance. Learn how to choose, set up, and use a live-performance sound system. Get the basics of live-sound mixing, save money by treating your gear well with a crash course in maintenance, and fix issues as they happen with a section on problem-solving, full of real-world situations. You'll also get information on stage-monitoring, both conventional and in-ear, along with the fundamentals of radio microphones and wireless mixing solutions. Finally, a comprehensive glossary of terminology rounds out this must-have reference.

Indie Rock 101 is a clear, concise, all-in-one primer for beginning to mid-level musicians looking for the essential fundamentals behind running, recording and promoting their band. It's all the basics that can take years to collate from more specialized or technical books, magazines and websites-and it's written by a real independent musician. Part I, Running Your Band covers the topics most relevant to forming and running the band: the people, practice and songwriting Part II, Recording covers pre-production considerations, gear and how-to basics, and timeless fundamentals and techniques around recording, mixing and mastering Part III, Promoting covers what you need to know to establish and grow your fan base, including graphic design, your press kit and website, sharing and selling your music, playing out and making a videoWhether you're just starting out or looking for a 360-degree primer to help take your music to the next level, Indie Rock 101 is the one book that covers it all.Featuring photos and QandAs from:Birdmonster CDBaby founder Derek Sivers Juliana Hatfield John Vanderslice Karate Mark Kozelek of Sun Kil Moon Spanish for 100 World Air Guitar Champion "Hot Lixx" Hulahan and more

Packed with studio tips and professional tricks and more than 200 illustrations, Secrets of Recording by Lorne Bregitzer makes it easier than ever to create pro-quality music at home. This book is the only reference you will ever need to start producing and engineering your music, or other artists' music, in your own home studio. Covering less than ideal acoustics, solving problems before they occur, tools of the editing phase, and much more, you can gain the knowledge and know-how to make your recordings sound like pro recordings -- understand the technology, use it in the right way and you can make a good recording great.

The sound recorder is themirror with a memory for those who listen. With it we can capture glimpses of our reality, producingpictures as we express ourselves. These may ultimately serve as reminders of who we were and of our dreams Your recordings are the vehicle for your compositions. Improve the artistry of your productions with this techniques guide, which focuses throughout on musicality and how your decisions affect it. Author Carlos Lellis Ferreira walks you through the recording process, bringing aesthetic considerations into each discussion. Learn visually with detailed diagrams and clear explanations of best practices. Unlike many other recording books, Music Production: Recording is organized around real-world scenarios, with details about roles and responsibilities that help you navigate through key stages of production.

Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms, Third Edition explains the physical and perceptual processes that are involved in sound reproduction and demonstrates how to use the processes to create high-quality listening experiences in stereo and multichannel formats. Understanding the principles of sound production is necessary to achieve the goals of sound reproduction in spaces ranging from recording control rooms and home listening rooms to large cinemas. This revision brings new science-based perspectives on the performance of loudspeakers, room acoustics, measurements and equalization, all of which need to be appropriately used to ensure the accurate delivery of music and movie sound tracks from creators to listeners. The robust website (www.routledge.com/cw/toole) is the perfect companion to this necessary resource.

Sure, you can import and mix a track in Pro Tools. You can work with MIDI and you know your way around the Edit window. The UI is as familiar as your most broken-in pair of jeans. We get it you don't need another button-pushing guide starting from the ground floor. Get uniquely in-depth coverage instead with In the Box Music Production: Advanced Tools and Techniques for Pro Tools. Author Mike Collins splits the book into three distinct sections covering how you use Pro Tools now whether you're working with the synths and samplers or loops and beats of a dance or hip-hop project, the soaring vocals of the next pop sensation, or the lush layers of an instrumental world music track. Use Pro Tools to its full potential with advice on studio techniques and full exploration of its internal capabilities. Learn to leverage Pro Tools and make it work for you with this guide that is fully grounded in real-world applications and process. This book assumes that the user has some music production experience and has worked through the basics in Pro Tools.

To complete an album, a producer needs to know what goes into capturing great music and teasing out inspirational performances from artists. As a producer, you are guiding not only the music, but also the business and the technical aspects of an album. What Is Music Production? is a "guide to this guidance."Formed from a blend of solid information extracted from detailed interviews, the book focuses on the process of music production, providing insight into how the producer guides this process and molds the final product.Whether you are a student or just starting your professional career, What is Music Production? explains what you need to know-from working with artists, songs, pre-production, mixing, and mastering to the finance and budgeting-to glean a professional result. Combining the "how to" with online assets and interviews, this book arms you with vital insight into the business of being a music producer.

Virtual environments such as games and animated and "real" movies require realistic sound effects that can be integrated by computer synthesis. The book emphasizes physical modeling of sound and focuses on real-world interactive sound effects. It is intended for game developers, graphics programmers, developers of virtual reality systems and training simulators, and others who want to learn about computational sound. It is written at an introductory level with mathematical foundations provided in appendices. Links to code examples and sound files can be found on the Downloads/Updates tab.