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Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

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Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#231

piano: Bach's Well Tempered Clavier the sonatas of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven

Is that your favorite book due to its educational value? What would you recommend it for?

Not just piano, when I was learning finger-style/classical guitar, and teachers I know in Jazz, we look to J.S Bach's Well Tempered Clavier just to learn about music. Some of it can be demanding in technique as you work through, but even the simpler lines are delightful, they teach you some lovely and memorable things about patterns, relationships, and harmonic structures in any kind of music we hear today.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#232
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By chance, do you know a good book for audio signal processing?

For signals (as opposed to images), you should have a look at "Understanding Digital Signal Processing" by Richard G. Lyons (ISBN-13: 978-0131089891). I enjoyed this very much and if you grasped the contents from it, you should be able to understand audio-specific books easily.

I second Lyons. In addition, "Digital Signal Processing: A Practical Guide" by Steven Smith is also quite approachable -- immersion in calculus not required.

"A Digital Signal Processing Primer" by Ken Steiglitz is a nice but rigorous intro to the subject. Written by an EE academic, it's more mathematically rigorous than Smith or Lyons.

Allen Downey's "Think DSP" is also worth a look, though its focus is more conceptual than practical, IMO.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#233
For speech recognition, a few very foundational textbooks are:

* Foundations of Statistical Natural Language Processing by Manning and Schuetze [0]

* Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition by Jelinek [1]

* Spoken Language Processing: A Guide to Theory, Algorithm, and System Development by Huang, Acero and Hon [2]

In particular, Statistical Methods for Speech Recognition is a book you could expect to see on the shelves of most people in the field.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Statistical-Natural-Langu...

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Statistical-Methods-Recognition-Langu...

[2] https://www.amazon.com/Spoken-Language-Processing-Algorithm-...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#234

Putting my mostly-retired audio engineer hat back on for a minute... The Yamaha Sound Reinforcement Handbook https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reinforcement-Handbook-Gary-Dav... This is basically the soundman's bible. Sold for an aspiring live sound engineer, has much more than just advice for live sound guys - covering everything from microphones to acoustics to basic electronics to handy rules of thumb to MIDI, all writ…

Does this book tell me how to compute e.g. when a physical object hits another physical object, what the resulting sound will be like? Or if object X (e.g. speaker cone) moves through air with velocity v(t), what will the sound be like at position P?

I've never read OP's book, but Andy Farnell's Designing Sound has a pretty comprehensive look into physics and sound if that's what you're looking for.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#235
post #62

As a chemical engineer (many of these go beyond the undergraduate level): 1) The principles of chemical equilibrium, by Kenneth George Denbigh 2) Mass Transfer by Sherwood 3) Process Dynamics, Modeling, and Control by Babatunde Ogunnaike and W. Harmon Ray 4) Chemical Process Industries by Shreeves 5) An Introduction to Numerical Methods and Analysis by James F. Epperson 6) Optimization: Theory and Practice by Gordon…

I am looking for a good, interesting and easy to understand book on Chemistry for beginners. What textbook do you recommend which covers both organic and inorganic?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#236

Watch repair: The watch repair manual, by Fried Practical watch repairing, by De Carle The Swiss Watch repairer's manual, by Jendritzki (This book is great, but don't pay more than $75. After Fried's book it pulls in all the information nicely.) Bulova Repair Training Manual Chicago school of watchmaking (There's no copyright on this course. A guy on EBay has been scaring people for years. He does not own the copyrig…

> When there's no mystery, there's no magic, I guess?

Things might no longer be magic then, but it's better if we can learn to enjoy them anyway.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/x4dG4GhpZH2hgz59x/joy-in-the...

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#238

Computer Graphics: [1a, 1b, 1c] Computer Graphics, Principles and Practice Series [2] Physically Based Rendering [3] Real Time Rendering --- [1a] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-James-Fo... [1b] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... [1c] https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Graphics-Principles-Practice... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Physically-Based-Rendering-Theory-Imp... [3]…

Any resources you'd recommend for learning about 3D volumetric rendering via voxels (not polygons)?

NVIDIA has some good papers on Sparse Voxel Oct-trees (GPU backed of course). Typically voxel rendering is done via raytracing.

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#239
post #13

Not sure if these count as textbooks by most peoples measures, but they have been textbooks for me. [1]Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team [2]The Wal-Mart Triumph: Inside the World’s #1 Company [3]Guerilla Marketing [4]The Lords of Strategy [5]Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [6] The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive [7]The Deming Management Method [8]Creativity Inc. [9]The Wisdom of Teams […

How have these books changed your life?

How did you even begin to make this list? Out of how many books have you listed these 15? How have you applied the knowledge from these books?

Some of these are not particularly information dense, or technical guides, so why do you consider them bibles for you?

Re: Ask HN: What are the best textbooks in your field of expertise?

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any resources you'd recommend for learning about 3D volumetric rendering via voxels (not polygons)?

NVIDIA has some good papers on Sparse Voxel Oct-trees (GPU backed of course). Typically voxel rendering is done via raytracing.

Thanks!

Do you have any opinion of voxel cone tracing vs raytracing?

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