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I ahve a DVD and receiver that both support DD and DTS. Does anyone have an opinion or justification about which is best?Thanks
mark
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nt
I was watching a rental disc of The Bone Collector a few weeks ago, and it was pretty scratched up and developed some pixillation problems and stopped completely right before the climatic scene between the killer and Denzel Washington's character. I restarted the disc at the chapter stop for this scene to watch the finale, and immediatly noticed how the soundstage had collapsed and the sound effects were less dynamic. I realized that I had been watching the film with the DTS track originally, but it had defaulted to DD when I restarted at the climactic scene. DTS is audibly superior to DD, and it's been obvious to my ears with every disc I've tried.Ken
DTS is the better format, and here's why.Dolby digital is a compressed format. The front and center channels are full range, but the surround (and very important) channel are bandwidth limited, somewhere in the order of 50-15k Hz or so. DTS's channels are ALL full range, and the encoding scheme is of somewhat higher resolution. If you have the ability to play DTS, DO IT! You'll be amazed at the difference. The only drawback to DTS is that many discs are not encoded in that format, and since DTS is an uncompressed full range track, it takes up a huge amount of space on the DVD. Many early DTS DVD's did not include any special features, or even Dolby Digital for this reason. Cheers!
The back channels are mono and bandwidth limited in Dolby Surround (Pro-logic); not Dolby Digital.-- Greg
as there are some incorrect statements in your reply. For instance, Dolby Digital is full range on all channels, except the LFE or .1 channel. It is common for the LFE to be cut off between 100Hz and 120Hz. The same goes for DTS, except 80Hz in the LFE channel. As for the surrounds in DTS, they get frequencies from 80Hz on up -- frequencies below 80Hz are redirected to the sub. As far as what happens in the mix to the higher frequencies, you may want to go to www.dtsonline.com and find the section that includes the DTS vs Dolby Labs letters (Dolby's paper, DTS's response to Dolby, etc.). WidescreenReview magazine also ran these letters in the mag and online (.com). DTS is not uncompressed: it is compressed. It is, however, much less compressed than Dolby Digital (usually between 10 and 12:1). The DTS compression is between 3 and 6:1. As for the space issue and special features, many of those early discs could have included the extras. The question was, "how will DTS be accepted by the consumer?" or, the polite "decoded" version -- "will we make enough money off of this to feed our greedy asses?". The DVD spec says that either PCM or Dolby Digital must be included on a DVD-V. However, Dolby Digital doesn't just mean 5.1 sound. It could be just 2 channels of audio with Dolby Digital encoding. The early DTS DVDs from Universal had this form of Dolby Digital, which I believe are at a bitrate if 192kb/s. DTS on these discs were at 1.54Mb/s, though now DTS is commonly encoded at 754kb/s. Dolby Digital for 5.1 is either at 448kb/s or 384kb/s, depending on the studio. For comparison, two channel music on a CD is at 1.4Mb/s. By the way, DTS can go up to over 4Mb/s and include eight channels of audio.
Joe,You've got some inaccuracies that really should be corrected too.
1) LFE channel is ~20 - 120Hz for both DTS and DD.
2) DTS surrounds can be full range, or managed by the processor, just as DD is. Crossover frequency if the speaker is being managed, is implementation dependent, and could be any number of frequencies, with the most common being 80Hz, as this is the THX spec for a small spaker to crossover.
Possibly more, didn't completely scour your reply.
Regards,
I was thinking of the movie theater version of DTS, not the home theater version. Sorry about the mix-up. But please do "scour".
Both formats are great for thier different reasons.I personaly prefer a DTS or THX disc.
The format selection is all in the encoding of the disc.
The best example off the top of my head is to try both formats off the movies Gladiator or Predator.
Both of these movies have very impressive and detailed seperation on both formats.
Hope this helps.
.
So I guess the question is DTS or Ultra THX
First, the THX issue. THX Ultra and THX Select certification is based on certain requirements that a product has to meet. In a nutshell, the Select certification is for products intended for small to medium size rooms. The Ultra certification is for medium to large rooms. I believe there is a cubic foot measure for the room sizes. I think the large (THX Ultra) room is 3000 cuft and up (or something close to that). I can't remember the specs for Select components. THX also does "certification" for VHS, laserdisc and DVD movies. This is similar to the USDA sticker on meat. The medium certified is supposed to meet at least the minimum standards that the folks at THX have set for video and audio performance. Please note: just because it says THX on the label doesn't mean that it's "the best" or "better" than something that isn't THX certified. There are audio and video products out there that are not only equal to a THX certified product, but are better. What a THX certification tells you is that the manufacturer probably took more time with quality control and/or parts execution. The THX standards have to be met or exceeded to get the THX label. At least you know the product wasn't a poor design. As far as DTS vs DD, this subject has been beaten to death. The best thing for you to do is get a DVD with DTS and DD encoding. Since the levels will be off (not by much), it won't be an accurate comparison. Do your best to level match. Listen to the DTS track, then the DD track. You decide which sounds better to you. On my wife's inexpensive system (receiver/digital surround processor/DVD player/6 speakers/$767), I can hear the difference. I have read reviews of DTS vs DD when DTS discs first came out in which the reveiwers had systems ranging from $50,000 to over $100,000. They "revealed" that there was either no difference or the difference was barely audible. What they really revealed was that either their hearing was impaired or they were extremely biased. Probably both.
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