This is how a practical technical book should be written. Short and to the point from page one. It is reminiscent of some long-forgotten manner of writing, for example, the “how it works” sections in service manuals for highly complex apparatuses. The book is supplemented by well-written MATLAB programs, which makes all of the experiments reproducible--very important for gaining confidence in a complex subject.

Audio watermarking is informally introduced in the first chapter. The second chapter is devoted to psychoacoustics and more precisely to auditory masking. Most of this chapter reads like an implementation recipe, which is exactly what is needed; deeper studies are left to other texts, which are cited in the references. Chapter 3 presents several watermarking techniques with algorithms in pseudocode style, and a performance analysis. In chapter 4, the authors provide all necessary details for the study and implementation of their proposed watermarking algorithm. Chapter 5 gives a detailed procedure for the performance evaluation of audio watermarking algorithms. The concluding chapter describes the necessary steps for objectively evaluating the audio quality of watermarked material. One of the most important requirements, of course, is that the watermarking has to be transparent to the listener who has been granted the rights to experience the watermarked audio material.

The book is highly recommended to anyone interested in audio signal processing. It could also serve as a guide for student projects in audio digital signal processing (DSP).