DSP Resources
DSP Resources
WIP warning. I’m not finished with this. It evolves.
OK, so you read my Audio Unit HowTo blogs posts, and you’re rockin’ that sine wave!
You’re a music person and didn’t do all that mathy DSPy geek stuff.
What now?
How’s your linear algebra?
Know what a matrix is?
A matrix, not The Matrix.
You’ve probably used some kind of synthesis platform – iOS synths, some DAW (Logic X, Cubase, Ableton etc) with plugins, maybe even hardware. So you know what a Filter is (sort of) and have seem the word resonance on a knob and you know how it sounds.
How would you actually write one in software?
Spoiler: see below.
Books
The Manga Guide to Linear Algebra by Shin Takahashi
Seems like a goofy idea, but I think it’s a fun way to grok some topics.
Introduction to Linear Algebra by Gilbert Strang .
It’s hard to escape seeing this one.
Hack Audio by Eric Tarr
Yeah. Get this one. Uses Matlab – or GNU Octave. That’s a good thing.
Designing Audio Effect Plugins in C++ – Will Pirkle
Will Pirkle’s books hit the right spots. Parts are slanted towards his software framework, but I thinks that’s not too intrusive.
Designing Software Synthesizer Plug-Ins in C++: For RackAFX, VST3, and Audio Units – Will Pirkle
Audio Effects: Theory, Implementation and Application by Joshua D. Reiss, Andrew McPherson
Audio Processes: Musical Analysis, Modification, Synthesis, and Control by David Creasey
Digital Signal Processing with Matlab Examples, Volume 1: Signals and Data, Filtering, Non-stationary Signals, Modulation by Jose Maria Giron-Sierra
Another Matlab focused book.
Creating Sounds from Scratch by Andrea Pejrolo, Scott B. Metcalfe
Think DSP is an O’Reilly book that uses python. It’s free to read o online.
PySDRis a python framework. You might not use it, but the first few chapters in this documentation is general DSP topics.
Apple Accelerate
If you’re writing Audio Units on an Apple platform, you can get by with C++ just fine.
Apple provides a framework that will speed up many types of calculations. Take a look.
Here’s a few resources on Accelerate.
Apple article on using Accelerate with audio
A SmackUnderflow post on Accelerate to use a FFT
Writing IIR filters with Accelerate
Appcoda’s blog post on Accelerate
Sites
TutorialsPoint DSP tutorial
This is pretty good.
DSP Guide
Steven W. Smith’s free online book and code.
DSP Guru
Sort of a DSP portal that points you to resources.
Julius O Smith on filters
A post from the CCRMA legend.
DSP subreddit
Of course there’s a subreddit. There’s one for everything, right?
Video
3Blue1Brown has really great math focused videos.
AND it’s not by an egomaniac who insists on putting his ugly mug in every shot.
Things like this:
But what is the Fourier Transform? A visual introduction.
And Playlists like The Essence of Linear Algebra
A College course on YouTube from the University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada.
Strang’s Linear Algebra class on YouTube
His MIT course page
If you want to choose just one, I’d say Eric Tarr’s Hack Audio
The book
He also has a YouTube channel.
Hack Audio YouTube Channel
