what's the big deal with DTS-HD MA??? L-PCM is the way to go...

[jon s]

I think a lot of people think that DTS-MA will be superior to Dolby True-HD (or LPCM) becuase of how much better DTS was compared to DD on regular DVDs.

Regular DVD DD was 448kbps, DTS was 1.5Mbps. NO contest, DTS was a higher quality soundtrack (but the loss of disc space resulted in poorer video quality). So a lot of users think that DTS-HD MA will be better than DD True HD along the same lines.

But DTS-MA and DD True HD are both considered to be lossless codecs. i.e. what goes in is what comes out. no difference... nada.

But this is where I think that LPCM is better. DD and DTS in any form or flavor is a codec. Compression, encoding and decoding is in the pot. Anytime there is a conversion going on, you never will get 100% back. There's going to some errors somewhere along the line. Just like converting a photo TIFF file to JPEG format. No matter if you set the JPEG to lossless quality, pixel by pixel the file looks a bit different from the TIFF file, but overall it looks identical. It's the subtle details that get changed.

LPCM is just a bit by bit file of the original soundtrack. No conversions, no compressions. So it is supposed to be a more faithful signal than any DD or DTS format.