LPCM vs. Dolby TrueHD vs. DTS-HD Master Audio

[PlayNice]

I was just wondering, what do you hope for in you sound mixes? Are you a Dolby kinda person or does LPCM get you going, me I have a soft spot for DTS-HD Master Audio. When you purchase a new Blu-Ray and look on the back what are you hoping to see? No need to argue why you format of choice is better, just plain fun here.

[BIslander]

What, no poll here like the one in your thread at AVS? But, thanks for not asking about quality differences. That's been discussed at great length many times in the past.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of BDs have dts-MA tracks these days. And I don't care about codecs because, with lossless, the output is all the same.

Sent from my HTC6435LVW using Tapatalk 2

[solarrdadd]

it would be nice if one of those options would be "makes no difference" because that will be true for some people.

[raygendreau]

Given the recent audio drop out issues on Brave, Nemo and Total Recall, I'm waiting until others purchase and comment on the audio before I will consider purchase. The three releases I mentioned all have TrueHD, but that may be a coincidence. Complex branching is part of the problem noted by Sony for the issue on Total Recall. Their recommended fix is to decode in the player and send PCM to the AVR. This is discussed in the Total Recall thread and a thread devoted to a disk replacement program was started recently.

[Villiam Hayes]

Originally Posted by solarrdadd

it would be nice if one of those options would be "makes no difference" because that will be true for some people.

+1 because I hope for lossless audio which of course they all are.

[Remo]

Lossless is lossless, makes no difference to me. I choose option 4 , all of the above.

[Petra_Kalbrain]

DTS HD MA for this viewer. Oh, and one more thing......

[Show spoiler]NOT THIS SHIT AGAIN!!!

[Blu-Dog]

Originally Posted by BIslander

What, no poll here like the one in your thread at AVS? But, thanks for not asking about quality differences. That's been discussed at great length many times in the past.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of BDs have dts-MA tracks these days. And I don't care about codecs because, with lossless, the output is all the same.

What about volume? Is that all the same?

No, I won't let it go.

[Remo]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

What about volume? Is that all the same?

No, I won't let it go.

Seems to me that volume control would be on your pre/pro or receiver.....

[Blu-Dog]

Originally Posted by Remo

Seems to me that volume control would be on your pre/pro or receiver.....

Oh, it's just an old argument about Dialnorm - when something is encoded with Dolby or DTS, lossless or not, a value is put in to vary the volume by some arbitrary number.

Typically, Dolby uses -4, DTS +4, but there are no standard inputs. Big Daddy has a table around here someplace showing various movies, and their codecs, along with these attentuation values at time of encode.

My gear is in an enclosed cabinet, so I don't know what the volume is going to be, and I hate sitting around with the remote trying to figure it out, or figure out what the attenuation is (my receiver flashes it up when the encode starts, but it's just silly). I just leave the receiver at reference volume.

It's a falsehood to say that the encodes are exactly the same coming out as they are before encoding - not all decoders are of the same quality, and this dumb volume fiddling has no purpose - but essentially, they're pretty much the same sound. Except for volume.

Everyone will agree on that, but some will scream, "they're EXACTLY the same, except..." which they'd never think was OK when picking up a newborn from the hospital, but it's OK when talking about audio in a movie.

[BIslander]

Please, let's not rehash this dialnorm volume "discussion" again. If no one bites, maybe Blu-Dog will let it go.

[i007spectre]

As long as its a 7.1 soundtrack I don't care.

[crackinhedz]

Originally Posted by Blu-Dog

It's a falsehood to say that the encodes are exactly the same coming out as they are before encoding - not all decoders are of the same quality

Not really sure where or why you make such a statement? First, when both Dolby and Dts claim their codec is "bit for bit" identical to the studio master, I don't see how decoders can vary in quality? they simply unzip the information.

A dolby decoder is used to decode Dolby information, surely you are not saying the dolby decoder is any better/worse than another dolby decoder? Same for Dts.

Granted there are different levels in decoder capabilities such as older legacy decoders cannot decode extension data, just core data.

But lets take a quote from Dts to further understand this:

DTS White Paper

Most important, DTS-HD always delivers the maximum quality to all listeners, whether their equipment is new or old, advanced or simple, and this optimum delivery is automatic within a single data stream. Simply stated, the DTS decoder used in a home theater system determines the level of audio performance, always defaulting to the highest possible level. DTS-HD Audio decoders will always deliver the maximum performance possible because the complexity is built into the encoder, not the decoder.

Decoding is not the issue...