Communication acoustics textbook for engineering students

Published: 14.1.2015

The textbook cover the entire communication path of sound in a broad-scoped manner and include computer models on how hearing works.

Wiley, an international publisher of scientific works, is to publish a textbook by Professor Ville Pulkki and Professor Matti Karjalainen by the name of Communication Acoustics: An Introduction to Speech, Audio and Psychoacoustics.

Communication acoustics is a field of science that researches acoustic communication paths between humans or between a human and computer with a focus on engineering sciences: production, saving, transmission, processing, repetition and observation of sound. The textbook is the first work to give in-depth broad-scoped information on the topic.

– The book has been translated and written on the basis of certainly one of the field's best published articles written in Finnish by Matti Karjalainen. Matti started work on the English textbook, and I then continued this work and expanded upon it, Professor Ville Pulkki explains.

The textbook has a total of 19 chapters that cover the entire communication path of sound in a broad-scoped manner and include computer models on how hearing works. The book defines communication acoustics especially as a field of science. The book includes many references and mathematical models, but Professor Pulkki does not feel that these are too complex for students.

– The book is intended for Master's degree students, but also for anyone interested in the field. The book is a broad-scoped collection, and an introduction to communication acoustics. It is also the optimal time to publish an English-language textbook, due to the current development of technology. I have received positive feedback on how there has been a demand for this book for quite some time.

The book will be included in the Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering’s introductory course for the Master’s degree programme in Acoustics and Sound Engineering.