The Big MAT Book: Courseware for Audio & Multimedia Engineering

Stephen Travis Pope
Graduate Program in Media Arts and Technology
University of California. Santa Barbara

Volume 1: Multimedia Engineering (280 pages)
Volume 2: Audio Software (253 pages)
Volume 3: Audio Hardware (147 pages)

Downloads (
DRAFT release - updated Sept 24, 2008)



Table of Contents   

Volume 1: Multimedia Engineering

Survey of Media Engineering & Technology
Computing with Media Data   
Sensors and Interfaces for Media Art

Volume 2: Audio Software

Sound IO and Streaming APIs   
The Spectral Domain: Filter and the FFT   
Spatial/Surround Sound and Reverb   
Sound Synthesis Techniques   
Control and Distributed Programming   
Databases and Music Information Retrieval   

Volume 3: Audio Hardware

 Audiophile Engineering   
 Recording Studio Design


Introduction to the Series “Courseware for Audio & Multimedia Engineering”

Multimedia engineering is a broad and complex topic. It is also one of the fastest-growing and most valuable fields of research and development within electronic technology. The book before you is an anthology of curriculum materials developed over the space of 12 years at the University of California, Santa Barbara for students in UCSB’s Graduate Program in Media Arts and Technology.

TheBigMATBook consists of the presentation slides for eleven ten-week courses, amounting to almost 500 hours of presentation time. For each of the eleven courses, the presentation slides are accompanied by the tables of contents of the course readers, and an overview of the example code archives. These resources are available for down-load from the MAT or HeavenEverywhere web sites (see http://HeavenEverywhere.com/TheBigMATBook).

The multimedia engineering courses included here cover theory and practice, hardware and software, visual and audio media, and arts as well as entertainment applications. Some of the courses (the first two chapters) are required of all MAT graduate students, and thus must target less-technical and also non-audio-centric students. The bulk of this material, though, consists of elective courses that have somewhat higher-level prerequisites and assume basic knowledge of acoustics and some (minimal) programming experience in mainstream programming languages.

TheBigMATBook courses borrow liberally from R&D publications by my friends and colleagues, especially Roger Dannenberg, Julius O. Smith, D. Gareth Loy, F. R. Moore, Perry Cook, Adrian Freed, George Tzanetakis, Ross Bencina and Dan Overholt. I want also to express my deepest thanks to my MAT and Music Dept. colleagues JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Curtis Roads, Clarence Barlow, Matthew Wright, and Matthew Turk, and to the many students who helped these courses evolve, either as course participants or teaching assistants.

    Stephen Travis Pope
    Santa Barbara, California—September, 2008