Speech Recognition Books

This book, originally published in 1983, was reissued in 1999, no doubt because of the importance of genetic sequencing in recent years. What is neat about the book is it shows how algorithms from one field can be applied to solve problems in another, possibly totally disparate field, one example being computational linguistics and sequence algorithms in computational biology.

A general overview of sequence comparison is given in chapter 1 with applications to molecular biology, human speech, computer science, coding theory, gas chromotography, and bird songs discussed. The author discusses how deletion-insertion, compression-expansion, and substitution are employed in sequence comparison. Different metrics are introduced, such as the Levenshtein distance. Dynamic programming, which pretty much dominates the book, is introduced here also.

Part 1 of the book discusses sequence comparison in molecular biology. The use of dynamic programming is emphasized and its importance continues to this day. The advantages of using the dynamic programming method are outlined, and it is shown how to find the substring in a longer sequence with most optimum agreement to a shorter sequence. In addition, given an RNA molecule with a known nucleotide sequence, methods are discussed for predicting the way different parts of the molecule will bond to each other. These methods are based on dynamic programming. Mathematicians considering doing research on or about entering the field will profit from the section on the biological background. The treatment of RNA secondary structures is excellent.

In part 2, the emphasis is on speech processing and what is called "time-warping", which is a technique for comparing functions by altering the time axis. An interesting application is given to the comparison of bird songs. An algorithm is given for adjusting the time scales for two songs to arrange them in the most optimal alignment. In addition, the differences between compression and expansion and deletion and insertion are discussed in this part.

In part 3, a modified Smith-Waterman algorithm is employed to find similar portions in two sequences. Called local alignment in computational biology, it is shown in detail how to define the recurrences for the alignment and how to keep track of the pointers for backtracking. This part also generalizes the operations of substitution and Levenshtein distance. In addition, the strategy of doing sequence comparison by allowing transpositions is discussed. Such a strategy entails a generalized concept of trace, wherein trace lines can intersect each other, leading to entangling of the traces into knots or plaids. The usual dynamic programming techniques must then be extended to deal with these complications. One particular algorithm for this is discussed, called CELLAR, which involves the construction of a directed graph whose paths correspond to admissible sequences of generalizations of traces, called cuts. The computational complexity of this algorithm is discussed. In addition, an O(n^2/logn) algorithm is given for computing string-edit distances.

The last part of the book deals with studying comparisons between random sequences. Combinatorial arguments are used to derive upper bounds on the expected length of the longest common subsequences of two random sequences. Other miscellaneous results dealing with comparing common subsequences of two random sequences are given.

I was introduced to James Allan when i start doing my little investigation for my research. I've just finished the first 4 chapters. Absolutely a good book for those who wants to know about TDT, event-based information organization and the techniques involved to detect an event from the news streams. The book will be really beneficial though for folks who's in IR too :) It's a compilation of technical papers and maybe the TDT webpage might help in order to get the rough idea on what is TDT. Indeed the technical part will be the algorithm, approach and technique.
Can't wait to read somemore.

Klevans and Rodman did an excellent job at presenting the theory and application of voice recognition. The book goes into just the right amount of detail that a subject of this nature requires. Also, various models and techniques for dealing with speech recognition were explored, with the pros and cons of each carefully stated. It was certainly a pleasure to have read this book, and the new ideas/techniques that were presented, have influenced me to further my research in speech recognition.

I am director of user interface design at Audiopoint in Fairfax, Virginia -- a voice portal/voice technology company. I work mostly in human factors, not programming. This book is exactly what I've been looking for, because it gives, I feel, an excellent overview of the many kinds of systems, software, and hardware that are involved in the work I do. I agree with another reviewer, who said that the author clearly states that not all the examples will work in every case, for various reasons. The great plus for me is that, even though my training is not for the most part in technology, I could still understand the book. The author takes you, usually, from the very beginning, and gives you the big, simple picture, which is crucial to have fixed firmly in your mind. This book is making it much easier for me to understand our IT people and talk with techies, and visualize various products which I'd like to see our company launch. So I give this book top rating....

In The VoiceXML Handbook: Understanding And Building The Phone-Enabled Web, computer telephony expert Bob Edgar takes the reader through a step-by-step introduction through all the features of VoiceXML (including VoiceXML 2.0). Readers will learn about Graphical Web Browsing, HTML, and HTTP; Telecommunications; Computer Telephony; Voice Recognition and Text-to-Speech; and XML. Also provided are a VoiceXML Tutorial and instructions on using Voice Browsers to crated Phone-Enabled Web Sites. The VoiceXML Handbook is an indispensable "how to" reference for anyone who needs to enhance their website with telephony-enabled technology and ability.

I can find more information on the internet on this subject than reading this book. In fact I turned to the internet while reading this book for answers to the questions this book failed to answer.

The book is a general overview of telephony application and a thin introduction to VoiceXML. It covers important matters in a very rapid and unprecise way. It contains even errors in the examples.

As a VoiceXML developer, I looked forward to this book. I was disappointed. Too much time was spent speculating on Version 2.0 and not enough time explaining Version 1.0. If you are looking to learn VoiceXML this is not the book.

It is surprising to see such a large amount of useful and well-presented information in a tiny volume like this. Although intended as a supplemental book emphasizing computer experiments, much theory is included, even if presented in a cursory manner. There are exercises and projects included for hands-on experimentation with the algorithms that are quite helpful. Unfortunately, it is too bad that the software does not work as promised, as this does subtract noticeably from the total learning experience. Note that this book is 12 years old, so you're not getting the latest developments in the field, but it is a good starting point for learning about speech coding. I would say if you can get it at a used book price, it is probably still worth the investment. It makes a good companion to the more modern "Speech Coding Algorithms: Foundation and Evolution of Standardized Coders" by Chu. The following is the table of contents.

DSPLAB: The DSP Laboratory Software.
Quantization: PCM and APCM.

Waveform Coding with Fixed Prediction.

Pitch-excited Linear Predictive Vocoder.

Waveform Coding with Adaptive Prediction.

Analysis-by-Synthesis LPC.

Subband Coding.

Projects.

Appendices.

Bibliography.

Index.

I gave this book only three stars. However, if the software had worked correctly, I would have probably given it four or five stars.

This is an excellent introduction to speech coding, but like the other reviewers, I failed to get the software to play out speech files (using soundblaster boards of various vintages - it always failed).

The text is very good and I would like to employ this in my teaching, but inability to hear the results is very frustrating.

Another reviewer has commented on difficulty playing the sound files. I experienced the same problem. I found a work around using some third party software, but I expected better from Georgia Tech.

I expected trouble free software. I didn't get it. Your milage may vary.

This book is written from a practical perspective and this makes it a pleasure to learn about speech coding. Practical exercises provided in the book are can be done with the software provided (2 disks) and this makes learning fun. As a beginer to DSP and espicially to speech processing, I have found most books very technical and difficult to follow without the guidance of a technical person. This book cuts through the technical jargon and gets to the heart of the matter. There are real audio files on which Digital speech processing can be performed, however i found that with my computer, i could not play/hear the sound files. The graphical user interface is straightforward and not difficult to use. I'm glad I bought this book.

Not very theoretically robust; many issues are touched on the surface without detail explainations. Some topics are clearly not pragmatic but yet the author make a big deal about them (like his own published method of LSF quantization). Organizations and structures are not my favorite as well. However, the book does provide references to the sources where the readers can refer to for the necessary information.

This is the best modern times book about the subject. However part of this qualification comes from the fact it has practically no competitors. Detailed books on speech coding are very rare. Although it deals with almost every aspect of speech coding, it does so with at times awkward notation, introduction of unexplained equation terms, using of non introduced terminology and at times formulas with obvious errors. I believe a second corrected edition should be necessary. Also in such a hypotetic second edition, I hope many explanations should be made clearer, otherwise for a beginner in the field supplemental references would be needed, and the price of this one is already high.

This book covers subjects lpc parameter quantization, coding standards, algorithms (MPLPC, RELP, VSELP briefly and CELP, LD-CELP and MBE in a very detailed manner). Error Control in speech transmission and system application aspects like DTX and echo cancellors are also reviewed. For the ones working on CELP and MBE based coders, this book does not only supply all the needed theory, but also practical issues even for real time applications on DSP processors.

This is an outstanding book with useful information and clear explanations. It doesn't just cover the VoiceXML spec but also shows you how to use it in IVR-replacement systems and other real applications. If you really need to build stuff with voicexml then you need this book. You can tell in reading the book that these authors have *actually done* voice application development and aren't just guessing at how it ought to work. I'm looking forward to the online voicexml 2.0 appendix, too.

This book isn't a good book to use if you're looking to develop VoiceXML applications. This book delves too far into proper software engineering and doesn't give enough information about the VoiceXML standard (doesn't touch vxml 2.0). I wish I would have purchased the wrox version that covers voiceXML.

This software is highly recommended by one of the leading Rehab Centers. My daughter, who is paralyzed from the neck down, has used it,with the proper equipment, to send E-Mail messages and to make telephone calls.

This book refers to version 4 of the Dragon Naturally Speaking program. The current version is number 9, and is very significantly different from version 4. I don't know why this book is being offered for sale. Do not buy it.

This book is seven years old. It was written for version 4.0. We are now up to 9.0.

Avoid it.

Great book if you have the very old version 4. Dragon naturally Speaking is up to version 9.5 and has changed drastically since this book was printed.

This book used to be useful but is now eight years out of date.

To learn how to use the latest version of Dragon, check out the Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 "Video Guide" and "QuickStart." They are CD-ROMs that play on your computer. I am the author of both of these titles. They are available on Amazon:

Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 Preferred QuickStart
Dragon NaturallySpeaking 9 Video Guide: Complete Three-Volume Set

The author's background explanation of IP was a nightmare.

His insistance that UDP is a member of the TCP/IP protocol suite is such a skewed perspective that it made me wonder if he had any competence with IP at all and made me suspicious of the remainder of the material. If he held this viewpoint for some reason (historical, or otherwise and not simply complete ignorance of the subject matter) I somehow missed that.

The editing was atrocious, which didn't help at all.

The author provides his e-mail to give comments and feedback, which I tried to do when I found that I had so many notes and errata that I was having trouble writing them all down in the book's jacket. However the e-mail addresses given for the author are no longer working. (Perhaps wisely!)

The first 3 chapters were a garbled intro to IP.

The sections on speech production and digitization in Chapter 4 were very good. Chapter 5 on telephony was a good chapter. Chapter 6 included a nice simple explanation of SIP.

Chapter 7 was about VoIP equipment which is probably OBE.

Chapter 8 was a complete joke. Explaining ping and traceroute, which should probably have been covered in the beginning sections on IP, but which most likely was boiler plate from other publications by this author.

I got this book free from Cisco and it was worth every penny.

This book trys to use simple language to explain many complicated topics, and it fails to expain well. The author is knowledgable on telephone operations, but other than that, don't expect to learn anything from this book. I want to learn more about VOIP/ATM, H.323, CELP, but I feel very very disappointed after read through the whole book. If you're a design engineer, don't expect to learn angthing from it. If you're a high school student, or a household wife, this may be a good book.

I was impressed that the author covered many key implementation issues throughout the book. This was really helpfull as I'm in the process of developing an integrated solution for my company.

I found this book to be a most practical guide to implementing voice over an IP network. In the book the author shows over 20 techniques, many of which are not obvious till you think about them that shows how to make voice a reality. I especially appreciated the authors insight concerning reconfiguring a router's access list. Its obvious the author really knows networking and shows his real life examples through numerous examples in the book.

I normally do not write reviews but when I noted a person said this book was for a 'housewife' and gave it one star I thought something was amiss. I found this book to be very practical, with numerous examples that show 'how to do it.' I purchased other books on this topic and found them to be filled with standards literature from the ITU. Thus, I was perplexed how someone could rate this book with one star when its significantly better that the others that spend most pages repeating ITU specifications.

I tried to use this book for a survey course on computer speech technology, but I couldn't rely on it for much. My students cursed me for making them waste their money on this book. It doesn't talk about the material at a sufficiently high level or with enough detail to satisfy even non-mathematical college students seeking a general overview. One wonders who the intended audience is? The preface says it is professionals in the field of speech (other than engineers), and I can testify it certainly doesn't work for students. The chapters that do go over some of the mathematical underpinnings of speech processing do it in the most unsuccessful of non-mathematical ways, which is to say equations are presented but are not properly explained for those who don't already know what they are about. There is really very little meat here to chew, on a subject that deserves more. Stick to the engineering books if you actually want to know anything about this subject. There is still no alternative but to learn all the math.

If you are not into FFT's and HMM's, but are interested in a slightly less mathematical explanation of Automatic Speech Recognition, this is for you. Interesting, and an easy read, watch out though, the next book you get will go math on you fast. This is a great book for non-engineers. You will eveltually out-grow its simple explanations - but that does not make a poor source. The book does not talk down to the novice - in the finiest tradtion of Carl Popper! - Well Done