From DTS-HD Master Audio to DTS: X

[VanHiscers]

The upcoming 4K UHD release of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo makes realize that whenever Universal upgrades a movie to 4K UHD, they're more likely to use DTS: X than Dolby Atmos.

I'm assuming it's because those films' original surround track were encoded in DTS-HD Master Audio. Of course I know nothing about sound mixing or audio encoding, but I'm wondering: do the studio actually take out the elements of those older surround tracks, and then mix them into a new object-based track, or is there a machine-learning software provided by DTS for the studios to simply convert DTS-HD Master Audio into DTS: X?

[HomerJay]

DTS:X and Atmos give the same results. There’s licensing fees involved too, plus costs associated with mixing software and hardware. No reason to switch camps.

[oddbox83]

I believe what you're asking is how they upmix.

This is very basic an explanation as I'm not an audio expert, but hopefully it'll clear it up a little.

The proper way is to use the original elements and upmix them into the new mix. It varies what they have - they might have everything surviving, the older the film the more likely it is they might just have separate dialogue and M&E tracks which they can unpick and add direction to.

Which brings us to examples where only the finished combined mix survives. It's not impossible though, an experienced audio engineer can still manually unpick certain elements though it's obviously nowhere near as easy or as clean as if the original elements survived.

For automated "upscaling", you get this in consumer grade gear. My Denon can upmix 2.0 and above to use height channels, using the newer form of Dolby Surround or DTS Neural X. Can't really do much with mono sources as there is nothing for the algorithms to unpick as it's all flat and will just force the mono out of the centre speaker regardless of how it was encoded.