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<i>Speech Processing and Synthesis Toolboxes</i>
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The abstract lines have labels: first line has [Background, Mechanism, Purpose] and second line also [Background, Mechanism, Purpose]. So all three labels have content. So produce 3 sentences in order: Background, Purpose, Mechanism.
According to the preface for this text, it ''...is based on material presented during the first semester of the postgraduate Masters Course in Sound and Vibration Studies at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research in the University of Southampton, UK.''At 518 pages and with a significant breadth of coverage, that first semester must be rather challenging.Nonetheless, having read this text at length, I intend to hand it to my own students with the simple directive, ''Read this.''Paraphrasing the preface, the first semester of the ISVR Masters Course targets students with little or no prior knowledge of acoustics.Many of us find ourselves in the same situation when introducing new students to acoustics here in the U.S., and it is that application that this text serves most admirably.The text is organized into eight chapters, with relevant references and questions at the end of most chapters.Each chapter has a different author, whose expertise and experience is appropriate to the subject matter of the chapter.Chapter 1, authored by Phil Nelson, is entitled ''An introduction to acoustics.''The chapter introduces, in brief, many of the basic concepts in acoustics, including the wave equation, impedance, standing waves, point sources, etc.The material is presented clearly and logically, pitched at a level appropriate to students new to the field.This single chapter has a breadth comparable to some two-semester graduate courses, but without the depth.The depth is intentionally omitted here ͑and in subsequent chapters͒, yet its absence is not a flaw in the text's purpose: to support introductory studies in acoustics.Nelson includes references to a number of excellent texts where the full measure of material may be found, including Kinsler and Frey, Skudrzyk, and Pierce.Chapter 2, authored by N. Lalor, is entitled ''Fundamentals of vibration.''The chapter presents a straightforward development of vibrationrelated concepts up through two-degree-of-freedom systems.It addresses free and forced response, damped systems, transmissibility, forced excitation, isolation, etc.In addition, there is a brief development of Lagrange's equations at the end of the chapter.A weakness of this chapter is the complete lack of references to other texts with more extensive development of the theory of vibrations.Chapter 3, authored by I. L. Flindell, is entitled ''Fundamentals of human response to sound.''The chapter provides an excellent review of the impact of sound on humans, including such issues as annoyance, sleep disturbance, and activity interference.The chapter also addresses the physiology of the hearing mechanism, and human hearing characteristics such as masking, level dependency, etc.The chapter also addresses various measurement schemes for acoustic signals, including some limited discussion of FFT analyzers.As a minor quibble with the sequence of information within the text, frequency analysis is not introduced until Chap.6, and as there is nothing in this section to direct the reader to Chap.6 for more detail, the FFT material here seems a bit out of place.͑I would have preferred the chapter on frequency analysis to have immediately followed Chap.2.͒ Chapter 4, authored by M. J. Griffin, is entitled ''Fundamentals of human responses to vibration.''This material is frequently absent from other introductory acoustics texts, and even from most texts on vibrations,