Poll: Should Sony use DTS-HD Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD?

[Monkey]

uh oh, DTS has dropped down to 60.38%

[ganthc]

Originally Posted by CYMBOL

Quantum of Solace already has DTS HD - sounds pretty darn good.

Saw Hancock in the theater and hated it - never tried the Blu-ray.

Yes, my mistake. I forgot that QOS was done by Fox/MGM and not Sony, so of course it would be in DTS-HDMA. Regardless, I could choose others like Spiderman 2 or Resident Evil, and the point remains that I personally wouldn't repurchase these movies just to get an dts-hdma track. And I think the point is that there isn't going to be an upgrade in getting that DTS lossless track versus the released Dolby lossless track.

In my experience, most DTS HD tracks sounds great while True HD tracks don't consistently carry the same weight for me. I actually tend to find PCM tracks the best of all of them.

Mine too. I don't know what the reason whether it's placebo effect or just better sound mixes for the specific movies, but the DTS-HDMA tracks sound incredible. That is not to say that TrueHD tracks are pathetic, I have listed some earlier that I thought were reference, or that I couldn't hear the difference between it and the LPCM track. And I would always welcome lossless over lossy audio, which is one reason why I was glad HD-DVD lost. But if you were to ask me which codec I want for the LOTR trilogy coming out on blu, I would choose DTS-HDMA every day of the week.

[CYMBOL]

Originally Posted by CYMBOL

Quantum of Solace already has DTS HD - sounds pretty darn good.

Saw Hancock in the theater and hated it - never tried the Blu-ray.

In my experience, most DTS HD tracks sounds great while True HD tracks don't consistently carry the same weight for me. I actually tend to find PCM tracks the best of all of them.

However, I judge each track on it's own. I would probably rent the Blu-ray and see if I felt it was substantially different.

Originally Posted by BIslander

And that's the point. I believe the implication of your first statement (that dts-MA > TrueHD) is inconsistent with the second. You like some soundtracks more than others and the ones you like tend to use dts-MA encoding. But, it's the soundtracks themselves that are different. The compression codecs used to store them on a disc don't create the differences you hear.

Read my comments carefully, I did not say DTS MA was better then TrueHD. In fact, I have not been able to compare the same movie with both tracks.

I said that for whatever reason, movies/studios that use DTS HD/MA seem to almost always have dazzling soundtracks (yes, no matter what the source materials), where as TrueHD soundtracks often are barely missing that little something that makes me say, "Wow!".

It took me a while to realize that I kept getting those "Wow!" moments from Fox discs and some Disney discs with PCM mixes. After a few months I saw a trend - studios using DTS HD and PCM seemed to have awesome sounding discs almost everytime. While I was often left just a tad dissappointed by some heavily coveted discs I was waiting for.

The trend presented itself to me. I would be almost a year before I realized many other people thought the same thing.

I don't own stock in either Dolby or DTS so it's certainly not personal for me, I'm just stating an observation of my own.

On a side note - I have turned off my DRC and it seems to have made little difference - has anyone heard a dynamic difference between when it's on and when it's not?

[Sir Terrence]

Originally Posted by CraigW

I know it's called marketing, but you can't deny the fact that dts was late on DVD, it was late on HD media and it was buggy initially. Dolby worked for me on day 1 with DVD and Blu.

Who cares if DTS was late, it is on DVD isn't it? it worked didn't it? I have never had an issue with DTS, so it was not buggy for me.

Again I don't care which is used. I like both codecs but I am just tired of this attitude that dts is somehow infallible. As I said earlier we have already had a few iterations of the dts decoder on the PS3 due to flag handling (throw away channels) and it sounds like Sony used that faulty decoder on some other units that have not been updated and at this point will they ever be updated?

Once again you go back to faulting DTS for its issues and skipping Dolby's. But yet you say you don't care. This is why you argument loses credibility. Now you are saying that Dolby is infallible with your arguments. You are doing the very thing you are railing about, you are guilty of the very crime you accuse others of. You are also making statements you cannot substantiate. The PS3 decoding is software based, not hardware based. There is no decoding CHIP in the PS3!

[CYMBOL]

Originally Posted by Monkey

uh oh, DTS has dropped down to 60.38%

Yeah, but the next highest is the "Don't care either way". So, in comparison, the DTS vote is quite high. People either want it - or have no problem if it is switched to DTS HD exclusively. Pretty good numbers.

[BIslander]

Originally Posted by CYMBOL

Read my comments carefully, I did not say DTS MA was better then TrueHD. In fact, I have not been able to compare the same movie with both tracks.

Which is why I said "the implication of your first statement". Many, many posters in this thread have connected the dots between soundtracks that they like and the codecs being used and have concluded there's a cause rather than a correlation. Frankly, the rest of your post suggests that you lean that way too. But, maybe I'm reading too much into what you've said.

On a side note - I have turned off my DRC and it seems to have made little difference - has anyone heard a dynamic difference between when it's on and when it's not?

If you went from Auto to Off, there shouldn't be any difference. Auto leaves DRC off unless the disc turns it on. And, Iron Man is the only disc known to do that. If you went from one of the On positions to Off, you should hear a difference every time. Dynamic range compression will lower the volume in loud sections and raise it on quiet passages.

[BIslander]

Originally Posted by CYMBOL

Yeah, but the next highest is the "Don't care either way". So, in comparison, the DTS vote is quite high. People either want it - or have no problem if it is switched to DTS HD exclusively. Pretty good numbers.

There's no question that the majority of people in this poll favor DTS. I think any other result would have been surprising.

But, I also don't think that's the important number in this poll for Sony. The post from Penton-Man asking for the poll and the news item on the site's main page announcing the poll both made it a point to mention the issue of backwards compatibility for people with older playback equipment - players or processors that can do TrueHD but not dts-MA. I think Sony may be looking to see if there's significant pushback from folks whose equipment can't decode dts-MA. There's been very little of that in the posts in this thread and the number of people voting to keep TrueHD has been running below 10% the whole way.

[Robert Siegel]

I just got my UK version of Twister which was released there by Universal and has DTS MA at 6-7 mbps. There is a huge difference between it and the US Dolby True version. The UK release (soundtrack) beats the US version in all respects (and the US version is great in itself). This leads me to believe it is a completely different source or encode, but it's a better one.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by Sir Terrence

Who cares if DTS was late, it is on DVD isn't it? it worked didn't it? I have never had an issue with DTS, so it was not buggy for me.



Once again you go back to faulting DTS for its issues and skipping Dolby's. But yet you say you don't care. This is why you argument loses credibility. Now you are saying that Dolby is infallible with your arguments. You are doing the very thing you are railing about, you are guilty of the very crime you accuse others of. You are also making statements you cannot substantiate. The PS3 decoding is software based, not hardware based. There is no decoding CHIP in the PS3!

If you look back at my posts, you'll see that I am critical of DN and DRC.

Again I am going after the ludites that automatically think that somehow dts lossless is better than Dolby's version. Especially when they compare two entirely different tracks.

I am not anti-dts. I am anti-FUD and it seems that some of the dts proponents have been trying to piss all over Dolby due to TWO easily defeatable options. And only ONE if you are not using Onkyo AVRs for TrueHD decoding.

As far as the bolded portion above, I understand the PS3 dts decoder is software based. dts is also not hardwired in any of the current AVRs it is embedded firmware that can be updated. ie. the code is changeable like many embedded designs today. If it was not I would have never got a user-applied fix for my Onkyo.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by CYMBOL

On a side note - I have turned off my DRC and it seems to have made little difference - has anyone heard a dynamic difference between when it's on and when it's not?

Yes. Even my wife noticed it who claims she could careless about audio.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by mntwister

I just got my UK version of Twister which was released there by Universal and has DTS MA at 6-7 mbps. There is a huge difference between it and the US Dolby True version. The UK release (soundtrack) beats the US version in all respects (and the US version is great in itself). This leads me to believe it is a completely different source or encode, but it's a better one.

The master used for the UK release probably has a higher bit-depth and possibly a higher sampling rate. The US version was produced by Warner and they typically are using the bare minimum, 16-bit/48kHz.

[tvine2000]

Originally Posted by CraigW

Not quite as good.... LOL.... then why is dts always trying to play catch up by adding other options to their tool and piss poorly I might add (flags that decoders don't handle... Really?). TrueHD was working reliably out of the gate without snap, crackle, BANGS...

Again I don't care which one is used but FUD here is un-freaking-believable.

perhaps i should have put after even if its not quite better or what ever i said.i don't think for sec dts sounds better then ddtruehd.
but i do think dolby works with more tecnology's out there then dts.

i have yet to see a sporting event thats broadcasts in dts.or a tv show.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by AlaskaDon

Here it is again with the "Just Turn it Off" response. It can be quite a bit more involved than just pushing a button (see my post a couple pages back regarding DRC and Denon AVRs).

Is it a huge deal? For audiophiles probably not. For the average consumer you bet it is. Why in the hell would Denon (or Dolby) make it more difficult than it has to be to even find the setting, let alone shut it off? It just doesn't make sense, and like it or not, this is a complete non-issue with DTS.

Well, from looking at Denon's manuals it looks like they got a little menu happy with some feature enables/disables. So does Denon default to AUTO everytime when initially decoding TrueHD or does it remember its previous setting once set to OFF even after a power cycle? I agree with you Denon's solution for turning this feature on and off is not ideal, but this is not a Dolby issue, it is a Denon implementation issue.

At least with the Onkyo, the Night Mode function/remote button maps to different DRC algorithms depending on the type of track being decoded since they are essentially mutually exclusive. You would not want to layer another DRC algorithm on top of another.

It appears from the Denon manual (2809CI) they have Dynamic Range Control (Dolby), Dynamic Range Compression(dts) and a generic Night Mode. Denon really did not implement this very well. Onkyo has the right idea, in the end it is all DRC, so map it to one function and handle which mode it applies to behind the curtain based on what type of signal it is decoding.

[trans22]

Originally Posted by CraigW

The master used for the UK release probably has a higher bit-depth and possibly a higher sampling rate. The US version was produced by Warner and they typically are using the bare minimum, 16-bit/48kHz.

what is it with everybody making excuses when a DTS track blows away a TRUEHD track, look at the poll it's fairly obvious most people think DTS is better, just compare the australian TRUEHD mix of the INCREDIBLE HULK to the DTS mix from the us/uk disc there's simply no comparison, the DTS mix is absolutely devasting, incredible bass and clarity that the truehd mix simply can't compare to.

[Damage Inc.]

Originally Posted by trans22

what is it with everybody making excuses when a DTS track blows away a TRUEHD track, look at the poll it's fairly obvious most people think DTS is better, just compare the australian TRUEHD mix of the INCREDIBLE HULK to the DTS mix from the us/uk disc there's simply no comparison, the DTS mix is absolutely devasting, incredible bass and clarity that the truehd mix simply can't compare to.

Things like these still make me sure that Dolby's audio is a lot more plain and DTS's is more advanced.
It seems like the differences of the DVD-equivalents are still pretty much there.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by trans22

what is it with everybody making excuses when a DTS track blows away a TRUEHD track, look at the poll it's fairly obvious most people think DTS is better, just compare the australian TRUEHD mix of the INCREDIBLE HULK to the DTS mix from the us/uk disc there's simply no comparison, the DTS mix is absolutely devasting, incredible bass and clarity that the truehd mix simply can't compare to.

Not excuses... but if they were sourced from the same master they would sound the same. DN is not killing the dynamic range. Maybe DRC is enabled or being forced on like the Iron Man Blu.

Again something like a difference of bit depth and sampling rate would easily explain a significant difference in audible quality.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by Damage Inc.

Things like these still make me sure that Dolby's audio is a lot more plain and DTS's is more advanced.
It seems like the differences of the DVD-equivalents are still pretty much there.

Some the best sounding discs in my collection are TrueHD tracks: Kung Fu Panda, Fifth Element, Dark Knight (killer running bass line), etc. And some are dts-MA: King Kong, Hellboy II, Incredible Hulk, Wanted, etc.

I bet if studios stopped hyping which codec is used and made it invisible to users we would quickly see this codec bias disappear. Again the key to most reasonable users is lossless. There is no reason to debate codec superiority now that lossless is the end result. Much of these arguments are just carrying over from the old lossy codec debate that came out during the DVD codec wars.

[BIslander]

That phrase "DTS mix" is popping up here again. There's no such thing! DTS and Dolby don't mix soundtracks. They zip and unzip them. Content producers mix the tracks.

In cases where the same movie is released at different times and in different places using different codecs, the mix itself is often different as well. It's not a DTS Mix or a Dolby Mix. They are simply different mixes, perhaps using different sample rates and bit depths as well, done by the content providers. If you prefer the one with the dts-MA encode, you'd still prefer it if it had been done with TrueHD.

[trans22]

i've bought 3 blu-rays in the past 2 weeks TERMINATOR 3 (UK TRUEHD), UNDERWORLD 3 and MY BLOODY VALENTINE and i have to admit that the DTS mix on MY BLOODY VALENTINE is the best of the 3, are people going to tell me that it's the mix? If you consider that TERMINATOR 3 and UNDERWORLD 3 are big hollywood blockbusters and that MY BLOODY VALENTINE is a low budget horror i think that says something.

[Tok]

Originally Posted by trans22

i've bought 3 blu-rays in the past 2 weeks TERMINATOR 3 (UK TRUEHD), UNDERWORLD 3 and MY BLOODY VALENTINE and i have to admit that the DTS mix on MY BLOODY VALENTINE is the best of the 3, are people going to tell me that it's the mix? If you consider that TERMINATOR 3 and UNDERWORLD 3 are big hollywood blockbusters and that MY BLOODY VALENTINE is a low budget horror i think that says something.

No, you simply prefer the design of the soundmix of that title over the others. Like BIslander said, there is no such thing as a dts mix. dts nor Dolby have anything to do with the soundtrack mixing. Both are merely delivery systems that now have lossless options.

You are comparing apples and oranges. The real test would be blind comparison of MBV with TrueHD and dts-MA to see if you really can hear a difference.

Here is pretty simple analogy: When comparing speakers do you listen to completely different material when evaluating performance between speakers? Or do you listen to the same material to see if one has more capability than the other? Your reasoning is like delivery system A is better because it sounds good with this material. Well my question is did you evaluate system B with the same material to check for differences? No you say. Then your initial conclusion is completely baseless. System A may be good, but you have no scientific evidence to say that System A is better than System B.

I would like to see more of a scientific test of the codecs and not this baseless crap from fanboys.

Evaluate them for the following:
1. Does PCM Output = PCM Input? Are they truly lossless?
2. With both systems complying to BD standards of having to carry a legacy lossy track, dts for dts-MA and Dolby Digital for TrueHD, which system has a higher compression ratio? Or is there a significant advantage of using one over the other. I doubt it, but let's find out.
3. Does applying DRC metadata to the encoded track alter the final PCM track when DRC is disabled?
4. Does DN affect dynamic range? I would guess no, but hey let's test it.
5. Test encodes with different flags set and check consistency of decoding across several platforms.

Again let's see some real testing and let's end this fanboy 'track A was dts-MA and it rocked therefore TrueHD sucks' arguments.