Reddit mentions of The Phonetics of Russian

No single letter in Russian alphabet has single sound correspondence and most sounds correspond to more than one letter.

Typical sounds corresponding to letters are described here. Phonemes are way more tricky since there are no dictionaries with adequate descriptions of Russian morphemics and real pronunciations.

Here is a tool which gives you rough transcriptions in IPA, but it is far from ideal. The most adequate book in English which describes Russian pronunciation is Jones and Ward.

> [–]Xilar 4 очка 6 часов назад
I think he is talking about voicedness, as in the difference between v and f or p and b or t and d. Voiceless sounds are still audible.

--
Xilar Might be right here.

I am using this book--

https://www.amazon.com/Phonetics-Russian-Daniel-Jones/dp/052115300X

which is excellent--but for every letter that I used to think didn't come in voiced and unvoiced pairs eg., Л/Р they mention that there is an unvoiced allophone, and even go to some length giving suggestions on how to pronounce it.

I've come to the conclusion that they just mean it is less voiced when it follows an unvoiced letter.

For example—

бинокль/ мысль are said to be soft and un(less)-voiced.