HD audio format - Lossless audio codecs: PCM vs Dolby True HD vs DTS HD-MA questions

[i want HD movies]

I am pretty well versed at the whole 5.1 thing, but am a little confused with this whole 7.1 thang.

If you do not have a HDMI receiver, like most of my clients, can we still use lossless? Will the PCM losselss transmit via fiberoptic or dig. coax? Or only through analog? I am using my analog input for my DVD-Audio/SACD player(the DV79AVi is amazing by the way) which I will not give up.

Thanks for the info as I am trying to stay on top of this new stuff for my guys at work and my clients. I just have not been able to get time to play with the new players enough to really know them.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by i want HD movies

If you do not have a HDMI receiver, like most of my clients, can we still use lossless?

If the disc has it in LPCM form, yes. If not, that depends on your player's spec audio outputs.

Will the PCM losselss transmit via fiberoptic or dig. coax?

It won't.

Or only through analog?

Analog only, if the player has it. If your player and receiver have HDMI, that'll be peachy.


fuad

[Blackraven]

I know there were similar threads before but didn't get a straight answer regarding specifics. Searched for "lossless audio codecs" but found nothing much either .

Anyways, I know that there are THREE lossless audio codecs available for Blu-ray.

1) Pulse Code Modulation
2) Dolby TrueHD
3) DTS Hi-Definition- Master audio

The first one is uncompressed while the other two are compressed. I do know that the last two need royalties/payments before usage while the first one is free.

So my questions are:

-Which is the best?
-Which is the worst?
-Which one is the all-rounder? (jack of all trades but master of none)
-Pros of one over the other?
-Cons of one over the other?
-If the uncompression of these compressed formats is fast enough, wouldn't that make it at par with PCM in audio quality
-Since PCM is uncompressed, would it have an advantage over the other two as the decoder/computer chips wouldn't have to go through another process(es) before outputting the audio?

Thanks.

[SDK]

I wonder what is the result of bit-by-bit comparison say after compressing PCM -> demuxing PCM -> bit-comparing...?

[dobyblue]

The data should be exactly the same as they are all lossless.

Thread starter - Martin Logan speakers all around, sweet freaking job man. I have Paradigm speakers and I'm going to replace my Monitor 11v4 with Monitor 11v5s on Saturday and more the 11v4 to my rear speakers. I'm also picking up a Servo 15 v2.

This guy's system in Barbados is amazing - he has the Martin Logan Statement E2 speakers as his mains - pure bliss I bet.

http://www.martinloganowners.com/~td...read.php?t=556

[JBlacklow]

Originally Posted by Blackraven

Which is the best?

They're all pretty transparent to the human ear, but LPCM is probably the best just for being uncompressed. However, it takes up room that can be used for other stuff.

Which is the worst?

Probably a wash as to "worse", since they're all basically the same as what you hear in the theater (or better, depending on your venue)

Which one is the all-rounder? (jack of all trades but master of none)

At this point, I'd guess TrueHD, since it's decoded by players in both formats right now, and theoretically saves space over PCM.

Pros of one over the other?
Cons of one over the other?
If the uncompression of these compressed formats is fast enough, wouldn't that make it at par with PCM in audio quality
Since PCM is uncompressed, would it have an advantage over the other two as the decoder/computer chips wouldn't have to go through another process(es) before outputting the audio?

See above.

[i want HD movies]

Thanks for the info guys. I really appreciate it.

So analog would be the easiest as it would bypass all problems of what decodes what etc. etc. that is perfect for my clients assuming the player has the decoder built in.

What would the receiver have as a decoding spec that would indicate it was capable of decoding the LPCM lossless codec? also this will go through hdmi 1.1 not just 1.3 (like DTSHD and DDHD) I am assuming.

Obviously if any receiver that has hdmi will take LPCM then this is easy. If not then which players will decode it internally?

Doby- I love em. Man those statements must be sweet. Overkill for HT though, only worth it for music. I just dont have the dough to do clarities or I would have. But i will tell you I listen to so much more music now that I have great speakers. At $2k for the pair I can't think of a single speaker that is a better value for looks and sound!!The Grotto never, and I mean never gets boomy, just clean pure musical bass. I have heard nothing but great things about Paradigms in general. I lok forward to hearing some myself. If you are lokign for a great sub have you ever heard REL subs? they are imported by Sumiko (also import Vienna Acoustic, Pro-Ject turntables, Primare Amps, and have their own extreme high end phono cartridges). Amazing sound, far beyond anything I HAVE EVER HEARD!!! Sub-bass down to 10Hz in some models!!!!! and no distortion or boominess ever.

[dobyblue]

Yes I do like the REL subs.
The Paradigm Servo 15v2 I'm getting after about 12 months of auditioning and research. It is 15", 4500 watts, 1500 watts RMS, bass extension down to 12Hz at 120dB. Every review I've read rates it as an incredible musical sub and excellent for HT as well.
I would love a pair of ML Summits myself, but US$10,000/pair is well out of my range. The Paradigm Monitor 11s retail for about MSRPUS$1250, but you should be able to pick them up for around 1,000/pair - they are worth every penny.

For the receiver - you can pretty much guarantee that all receivers with analog inputs accept PCM. PCM does not need to be decoded as it is not encoded to begin with. There are a few receivers on the market that do not accept audio through HDMI, but rather only accept it for video switching allowing multiple HDMI connections to go to one television. I believe the Pioneer 1016TX is like this.

[Alex Pallas]

recently i saw an advert or something for a blu-ray movie which said:

Audio:
Master source files

that wording is excellent, it cant get any better than "Master source files", whatever the format happens to be. As far as the comparison for the "lossless" formats go, you have to compare the frequencies and storage methods they use. for example flac compressess wav through a lossless process, so i'd assume it would be a similar situation for the other formats.

[jgr757]

High fidelity audio is not relevent when all of the brain's cpu cycles run through the eyeballs into the brain. Vidiots will kill any high fidelity that might have been possible with Blue Ray.

As usual, Blue Ray will use cheap processors with little power and will not be a true high fidelity medium as surround sound audio is 5.0. The concentration is in gaming and video and not sound quality (sound quantity is far more important and easily hyped by the industry). The center stage is the from the center speaker, the presence is created by the left and right and the rear gives the affect of the venue. All 5 channels must be full range 20-20k and no low frequency effects. Dolby encoding in the recording would render the sound as a low fidelity medium and is truely pointless with today's recording equipment. Quality recordings of the past, from the 40s-60s are proof of that but most people are tied to gaming and the TeeVee. Unfortunatly, no recording studios know or understand how to mike a recording session to allow the sound of the entire instrument, much less the entire rock, jazz, choral or any other ensemble to contain the character. The sound of the musical source's resonances (harmonics and timbre) are lost by stuffing mikes as close to the vocalists and down the throats of many instruments and even inside of guitars. Dolby destroys the high frequency harmonics that give an instrument it's sonic signature. I remember making the point of how damaging Dolby was back in the 1970s using Sony 880s and Tandberg 10s and comparing mixed down masters with and without dolby. Playback with dolby at the same S/N ratio as w/o dolby at Sound Recorders and Custom Electronics in Omaha made it very obvious that dolby was destroying the upper audio spectrum and it was even proven with the use of a scope.

Blue Ray will go the same route as other digital mediums and dumb down the audio portion even farther as has been standard procedure for the last 30 years with the exception of DSD (which could be dramatically improved with the extra space and processing power). A dedicated Beta audio recording is as dynamic and superior sounding to any digital format so far. Since cheap is good, those of us that play and listen to live music and enjoy the recordings when sound engineers knew what they were doing, are going to be ignored again.

[Maximus]

Originally Posted by jgr757

High fidelity audio is not relevent when all of the brain's cpu cycles run through the eyeballs into the brain. Vidiots will kill any high fidelity that might have been possible with Blue Ray.

As usual, Blue Ray will use cheap processors with little power and will not be a true high fidelity medium as surround sound audio is 5.0. The concentration is in gaming and video and not sound quality (sound quantity is far more important and easily hyped by the industry). The center stage is the from the center speaker, the presence is created by the left and right and the rear gives the affect of the venue. All 5 channels must be full range 20-20k and no low frequency effects. Dolby encoding in the recording would render the sound as a low fidelity medium and is truely pointless with today's recording equipment. Quality recordings of the past, from the 40s-60s are proof of that but most people are tied to gaming and the TeeVee. Unfortunatly, no recording studios know or understand how to mike a recording session to allow the sound of the entire instrument, much less the entire rock, jazz, choral or any other ensemble to contain the character. The sound of the musical source's resonances (harmonics and timbre) are lost by stuffing mikes as close to the vocalists and down the throats of many instruments and even inside of guitars. Dolby destroys the high frequency harmonics that give an instrument it's sonic signature. I remember making the point of how damaging Dolby was back in the 1970s using Sony 880s and Tandberg 10s and comparing mixed down masters with and without dolby. Playback with dolby at the same S/N ratio as w/o dolby at Sound Recorders and Custom Electronics in Omaha made it very obvious that dolby was destroying the upper audio spectrum and it was even proven with the use of a scope.

Blue Ray will go the same route as other digital mediums and dumb down the audio portion even farther as has been standard procedure for the last 30 years with the exception of DSD (which could be dramatically improved with the extra space and processing power). A dedicated Beta audio recording is as dynamic and superior sounding to any digital format so far. Since cheap is good, those of us that play and listen to live music and enjoy the recordings when sound engineers knew what they were doing, are going to be ignored again.

You forgot the [/rant] .

On a, more serious note, you are correct to some extent, though all the BD exclusive studios are using lossless/uncompressed sound on their releases, and players do have reasonable sound processors for DD+. The main culprits are the HD DVD studios as Warner, Universal and Paramount seem to think that DD+ is good enough, but with inferior disc space I guess DD+ will be the best they could do. TrueHD seems to be relegated to short films (see KK) or Stereo.

I expect that the Sony player will have excellent sound decoding capabilities if they stay true to form. My Samsung is good enough for now as it passes PCM through HDMI 1.1 and Sony/Disney releases use PCM. Samsung's DTS decoders are very good as Fox releases sound excellent when passed through my Marantz AVR.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by jgr757

High fidelity audio is not relevent when all of the brain's cpu cycles run through the eyeballs into the brain. Vidiots will kill any high fidelity that might have been possible with Blue Ray.

As usual, Blue Ray will use cheap processors with little power and will not be a true high fidelity medium as surround sound audio is 5.0. The concentration is in gaming and video and not sound quality (sound quantity is far more important and easily hyped by the industry). The center stage is the from the center speaker, the presence is created by the left and right and the rear gives the affect of the venue. All 5 channels must be full range 20-20k and no low frequency effects. Dolby encoding in the recording would render the sound as a low fidelity medium and is truely pointless with today's recording equipment. Quality recordings of the past, from the 40s-60s are proof of that but most people are tied to gaming and the TeeVee. Unfortunatly, no recording studios know or understand how to mike a recording session to allow the sound of the entire instrument, much less the entire rock, jazz, choral or any other ensemble to contain the character. The sound of the musical source's resonances (harmonics and timbre) are lost by stuffing mikes as close to the vocalists and down the throats of many instruments and even inside of guitars. Dolby destroys the high frequency harmonics that give an instrument it's sonic signature. I remember making the point of how damaging Dolby was back in the 1970s using Sony 880s and Tandberg 10s and comparing mixed down masters with and without dolby. Playback with dolby at the same S/N ratio as w/o dolby at Sound Recorders and Custom Electronics in Omaha made it very obvious that dolby was destroying the upper audio spectrum and it was even proven with the use of a scope.

Blue Ray will go the same route as other digital mediums and dumb down the audio portion even farther as has been standard procedure for the last 30 years with the exception of DSD (which could be dramatically improved with the extra space and processing power). A dedicated Beta audio recording is as dynamic and superior sounding to any digital format so far. Since cheap is good, those of us that play and listen to live music and enjoy the recordings when sound engineers knew what they were doing, are going to be ignored again.

You do not need full range 20-20,000 on each channel as there are barely any speakers made that have that sort of frequency range, which is why there is a .1 in the mix. Bass frequencies from around 10Hz to 80Hz are so low that you do not need to have them in a specific spot, but rather in a corner, behind your listening area, in between your front speakers, beside one speaker; all these are good options. THX certifications are for 80Hz crossover for sub to main speakers, so as long as your 5.0 speakers can handle down to 80Hz with a +/- 2dB range you should be good to go.
Blu-ray is using lossless audio almost exclusively from their exclusive studios and Warner should be following suit soon enough. Lossless PCM allows for Buena Vista to provide you with a 24/48 PCM track that is a match to the quality of the studio reel. There is nothing wrong with the way many of the multi-channel tracks these days are recorded and there are also some great 5.1 music mixers out there like Elliot Schriner, who has done an amazing job with Sting, NIN, REM and others on their SACD and DVD-A releases.

Blu-ray WILL NOT dumb down the audio. It is part of the attraction of Blu-ray and something the BDA emphatically puts in all their ads as the second most exciting feature of Blu-ray discs - lossless studio master quality audio.
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-1...s/1/Index.html

1. What is Blu-ray Disc?
Best audio possible with native uncompressed surround sound (it is better than theater sound)

It would be great if they incorporate DSD encoding at 1/2822.4 for Blu-ray audio tracks, but PCM and DTS-HD Master Audio will be just fine in the fidelity department for me. I would certainly cream myself if SOny started using DSD encodes for Blu-ray though.

I think you may be thinking of HD DVD if you believe any format is currently dumbing down the audio portion.

A 24 bit 192,000 samples per second digital recording is indistinguishable from an analog recording to ears other than those on a bat.

[ClaytonMG]

To add onto what DobyBlue said about THX's standards. They even say to set your speakers to small, so there is basically no reason at all to use large speakers all around. I use large speaker for my front but as any set up disc will tell you, you do not need full range speakers for any of the rears as most sound designers do not put any LFE in the rear speakers. Plus any LFE effect in the rear speakers can be sent to your sub. If you use THX's set up, you'll notice that it's pretty much impossible to tell where the bass is coming from (which is also the point of putting the crossover frequency at 80Hz). I don't know who keeps saying that the audio on Blu-Ray is worse, but they have got to be out of their mind. I have noticed on Dolby Digital-Plus tracks (a requirement on HD-DVD) the LFE has been lacking on 99.9999% of the movies I have. Sure there's bass, some parts have heavy bass. However the player doesn't seem to send the frequencies past a certain point over to the reciever. I plan to do some tests with that this weekend sometime or when I finally get my new sub.

[jgr757]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

You do not need full range 20-20,000 on each channel as there are barely any speakers made that have that sort of frequency range, which is why there is a .1 in the mix. Bass frequencies from around 10Hz to 80Hz are so low that you do not need to have them in a specific spot, but rather in a corner, behind your listening area, in between your front speakers, beside one speaker; all these are good options. THX certifications are for 80Hz crossover for sub to main speakers, so as long as your 5.0 speakers can handle down to 80Hz with a +/- 2dB range you should be good to go.
Blu-ray is using lossless audio almost exclusively from their exclusive studios and Warner should be following suit soon enough. Lossless PCM allows for Buena Vista to provide you with a 24/48 PCM track that is a match to the quality of the studio reel. There is nothing wrong with the way many of the multi-channel tracks these days are recorded and there are also some great 5.1 music mixers out there like Elliot Schriner, who has done an amazing job with Sting, NIN, REM and others on their SACD and DVD-A releases.

Blu-ray WILL NOT dumb down the audio. It is part of the attraction of Blu-ray and something the BDA emphatically puts in all their ads as the second most exciting feature of Blu-ray discs - lossless studio master quality audio.
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-1...s/1/Index.html

It would be great if they incorporate DSD encoding at 1/2822.4 for Blu-ray audio tracks, but PCM and DTS-HD Master Audio will be just fine in the fidelity department for me. I would certainly cream myself if SOny started using DSD encodes for Blu-ray though.

I think you may be thinking of HD DVD if you believe any format is currently dumbing down the audio portion.

A 24 bit 192,000 samples per second digital recording is indistinguishable from an analog recording to ears other than those on a bat.

LFE is for video only. It is a special effect. 90% of the brains cycle time is watching video while the other 10% doesn't care about timbal accuracy or re-creating a sound state and the sensation of the original hall during recording.

Audio does not use special effects. In audio, center stage is reproduced by the center speaker and IS NOT AN AFTERTHOUGHT LIKE VIDEO, the left and right reproduce an illusion of a three dimensions sound stage and adds presence. The rear channels re-create the sense of the hall used in the recording. Some of the lowest frequencies would come from the rear. If 5 small monitors are about the room, then 2 subwoofers would be required, one in the front for center and left+right channels, and one in the rear. (Use a directional mic and point it to the back of the room when playing low frequency instruments such as an 8' drum or 32-ft+ pipe organ, large Bosendorfer piano... and measure).

PCM is to DSD as 1080i HD-TV vs HD Streaming Video with no interlace at 1920x1200 minimum. Interpolation is interpolation is best guess. Look at the oscilloscope and the wave form of even simple wave form looks nothing likes it's analog. PCM is cheap though and cheap is good ($2/chip from TI) for most audio for video applications and $20 for high end HD-CD tops. It is also simple and easily edited on a PC. It is an antiquated architecture that works poorly for audio. The AES looks to be moving to DSD for the original recording and then making it available as PCM. Computer power is considerably higher for DSD recording and especially editing. DSD also has the ability to expand technically far beyond the abilities of PCM in the future. The difference in architecture is greater than the x86 vs 6800. I've worked at Motorola for quite some time and had to debug programs at the assembler level for both. The 6800 was not limited to 64K and was a well though out, well designed chip. Instructions made sense and when problems occurred, it was easy to debug. The x86 was thrown together using bi-endian instructions that had pathetic memory management and an instruction set that even Microsoft hated, but used anyway because IBM owned 44% of Intel and put Intel inside. It is no wonder buggy software is everywhere in the x86 realm as the instructions it generates are nearly impossible to debug in a crash dump or on-line debugging.

For some people, a bug filled program conceived by half assed architecture is fine, but when time is spent on systems architecture and design in the front end, the result is higher quality with greater longevity. Analog is the ideal, and that is why professional still shot cameras are still used a it can capture both the main image and depth with accuracy. DSD is the best current technology and has expandability that far outpaces PCM. dCS created the chips for both HD-CD and DSD for Philips and Sony. dCS and EMM labs are at the fore front of both. Are these companies involved with the sound to be put on Blue Ray?

Dolby drops the high frequencies to a point and then brings them back up, only to loose not only "hiss" (which is inaudible using current microphone and mixer technology), but the sonic signature of instruments are lost, especially acoustical. It becomes hard to distinguish between different types of string instruments, let along different brands, and the same for pianos, trumpets, flutes... Dolby is to music as Bose was to hi-fi.

The analog original heard by the ears is the reference and can be measured fairly well using the finest equipment. A technology that uses special effects in audio does not intend to re-create the original. A technology that is also the cheap and easy way that has no future in advancing the state of the art is a cop out. PCM 5.1 dolby surround video sound is a copout.