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Thread: Dolby Digital or DTS?

  1. #1
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    Default Dolby Digital or DTS?

    Which is better? I recently upgraded my receiver to a Marantz which handles both. Previously I had an older Onkyo that only did Pro-logic or DTS 5.1. Some dvd's such as the recently released James Bond box sets handle both. Is one preferred to the other when both are available on the dvd settings?
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    a lot of people seem to prefer dts. i've personally found i enjoy dolby digital using my yamaha's "movie: spectacle" sound processing format the best.

    the best answer you can get on this, however, is trying both yourself and seeing which you prefer.
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    I don't think it's a matter of personal taste. I believe DTS is superior because it actually has a greater bandwidth, higher bit rate, or something like that (It's late and I'm brain dead).

    And yes, I have always been able to tell a difference. Watch the opening of Saving Private Ryan in one then the other. A marked difference both tone and clarity. Same is true with the LOTR series.

    shane
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    Default Dts

    I listen to a lot of DVD concerts. DTS is always clearer and has a better soundstage when it is available. I haven't tried DD with my receiver sound processing though.

    Michael

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    Quote Originally Posted by BOLTS
    Which is better? I recently upgraded my receiver to a Marantz which handles both. Previously I had an older Onkyo that only did Pro-logic or DTS 5.1. Some dvd's such as the recently released James Bond box sets handle both. Is one preferred to the other when both are available on the dvd settings?
    On a technical level, they are extremely different codecs, although sonically they both are about equally capable of representing movie soundtracks at the most common bitrates used for each (448 kb/s for DD and 754 kb/s for DTS--actually, DD is slightly superior at 448 and closer to equal at 384). DD is the far more efficient and fully featured of the two, but the additional features that try to make it the one-size-fits-all codec have hurt its standing among home theater enthusiasts and audiophiles, and in some cases really do affect sound quality, making the simpler DTS the format of choice for those with decent audio equipment whenever there is a choice.

    The problems with DD's features are a bit convoluted, but let's see if we can get through this. First, there's "dialogue normalization" which in theory simply introduces a bias to the main volume control (i.e. -12 dB really ends up being -16 dB) in order to allow producers to maintain a standard volume level for dialogue, independent of dynamic range, so that people would supposedly never have to adjust their volume control when they play different material. This was considered important back when DD was being considered as the standard for ATSC, which it is today. The problem is that in practice, this feature is never used correctly, if it is even a consideration at all, and most DVD producers, like everyone else, use the default value of -4 dB. I guess from an engineer's perspective, it was a good idea to leave a little wiggle room in the default value (it can't go higher than 0), but in this case, it means that with all else being equal, most DD soundtracks are played 4 dB more quietly than their DTS counterparts in direct comparisons, which would make most perceive DTS to be superior. People have known about this for a long time, and can make the appropriate compensation, but some DD decoders unfortunately do not bias the volume control but instead use DSP to reduce the volume of DD soundtracks, which can negatively impact sound quality. In short, although well intentioned, dialogue normalization turned out to be a useless feature that never helps and sometimes hurts.

    The other major feature that works against DD is dynamic range compression. This is actually quite a useful feature for some people under some circumstances, but if it is mistakenly left on or is unwittingly defaulted to some nominal value in a receiver, then with all else being equal, DD soundtracks are going to sound less dynamic than their DTS counterparts. This is a fairly well known issue, but it's still not that simple. For one thing, some decoders unfortunately do not even have an option to turn this feature off, only allowing one to select from High, Medium, or Low, which means that DD's dynamic range will always be compromised when played on such equipment. For another, as I've previously explained in another thread, there is a different form of dynamic range compression encoded as parameters in the soundtrack itself that enforce compression when mixing down to a phantom center channel. Producers can choose to have no compression in this case, but as you can probably guess by now, most simply stick with the defaults, and the defaults are non-zero. The end result is that those who use a phantom center--which include many discriminating audiophiles who have very fine equipment--will have compromised dynamic range, and will most likely attribute this failing to the limitations of the DD codec itself, when in fact all of these issues could have been avoided completely with proper encoding and setup.

    Thus far, I have made the assumption that all else is equal--the original uncompressed soundtrack in particular--but in actuality, this is rarely the case. On DVD titles that have both DD and DTS soundtracks, the DD soundtrack is often compromised (before encoding) to be less demanding on lesser equipment, which usually means speakers built into TVs. One probable reason that this is done would be simple opportunity--those who don't have home theater audio equipment usually have no choice but to play the DD track (that's all their players can decode), while others will use the uncompromised DTS track if they care about quality. This has nothing to do with DTS as a codec, but that's certainly what the end result looks like. There are also marketing reasons for using a more impressive mix for DTS. One is that because when properly encoded and set up, DD and DTS are usually hard to tell apart in overall quality, giving DTS a different and better mix adds value to DTS as a feature that can be sold to the public. Some studios don't even try to disguise this practice on some titles, such as Gladiator, which has a new mix only on DTS; yes, it's a discrete 6.1 mix, so it's justified, but they could have used the new mix in 5.1 form in DD, and chose not to (this studio has a stake in DTS, by the way). One very interesting example to consider is The Lion King, which also contains the original mix and an extremely different and far more impressive-sounding new mix in which everything sounds so much clearer, as well as more dynamic and enveloping. This is so interesting because I've seen a number of people refer to the new mix as the DTS track, when in fact it is marketed as the "Disney Enhanced Home Theater" soundtrack, and is, in fact, encoded in DD.

    I've gone into about as much detail as I think anyone can stand, so let me sum up the main points, in my view:

    1) DD is often compromised for one reason or another, often deliberately, especially when a DTS soundtrack is also present, so when no details are known about the mixes and their mastering, one should always play the DTS soundtrack when given a choice.

    2) DD is perfectly capable of matching or even exceeding the performance of DTS at the common, practical bitrates used...when properly encoded, that is. If a DVD of a movie with an impressive soundtrack only has a DD track, don't sweat it--if the producers care about quality, they'll give you the best soundtrack they can, and in these cases, it should be just as good as the DTS track they would have given you.

    3) Use a good center speaker rather than a phantom center to avoid the pitfall of improperly encoded DD downmix parameters.

    Quote Originally Posted by shane55
    I don't think it's a matter of personal taste. I believe DTS is superior because it actually has a greater bandwidth, higher bit rate, or something like that (It's late and I'm brain dead).
    DTS can have a bitrate as high as 1509 kb/s on DVD, in which case it operates in a different mode, and is clearly superior to DD at its maximum DVD bitrate of 448 kb/s (I don't know about DD at 640 kb/s, its maximum rate at the decoder). DTS should also sound superior on laserdisc at 1235 kb/s vis-à-vis DD at 384 kb/s on this format. That said, DTS almost always runs at 754 kb/s on DVD, in order to save space and bandwidth for the image, which forces it to make major compromises due to the lower efficiency of its encoding algorithms. DD at 448 kb/s easily measures better than DTS at 754 kb/s, and sounds better to me when properly encoded using the same master soundtrack (e.g. as on Fantasia 2000), however in the common case described above, the technical superiority of DD at lower bitrates is moot--with extremely rare exceptions, just select the DTS soundtrack when given a choice.

    Quote Originally Posted by shane55
    And yes, I have always been able to tell a difference. Watch the opening of Saving Private Ryan in one then the other. A marked difference both tone and clarity. Same is true with the LOTR series.
    These are examples of using different mixes (Spielberg has a stake in DTS and New Line is a huge fan at the very least). The differences wouldn't be so pronounced, otherwise, and even in these cases are not nearly as pronounced as the differences between the two DD soundtracks on The Lion King (note that Disney, which also produced Fantasia 2000, referenced above, has NO stake in DTS [of which I'm aware]).

    Quote Originally Posted by MichaelG
    I listen to a lot of DVD concerts. DTS is always clearer and has a better soundstage when it is available.
    I've found that DTS is most commonly encoded at 1509 kb/s in these cases, as opposed to movies, so for most concerts on DVD it really is a superior encoding, no question (not necessarily a superior codec in general, though--just throwing lots of bandwidth at a codec that's not doing much, relatively speaking ).

    By the way, DTS in commercial theaters is a completely different, less sophisticated format that doesn't even have a separate LFE (.1) channel (these effects are encoded in the surround channels and filtered out during decoding), so it's funny when I see people in other forums argue as if they were one in the same.
    Last edited by Dread Pirate Robert; 05-22-2007 at 10:36 AM.

  6. #6
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    Very informative reply Dread Pirate. Are you in the sound business?

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    That has got to be some of the best explaining I have read! Robert, who are you and what do you do?
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    Quote Originally Posted by chas
    Very informative reply Dread Pirate.
    Thanks, I hope that I got most of that right!

    Quote Originally Posted by chas
    Are you in the sound business?
    No, I'm a pirate, aren't I? Well, actually, I'm a software engineer...but I haven't gotten around to paying the shareware fee for the version of TextPad I've been using yet, so that sort of counts, doesn't it? Argh, matey...aaarrgh....

  9. #9
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    Mr. Dread...

    Informative, concise and extremely detailed post.
    Thanks!

    shane
    Yes Eve, I like to watch.

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  10. #10
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    Default Excellent explanation

    Wow Dread Pirate! That was an excellent explanation! Thanks for sharing your knowledge! I really appreciate it!

    Michael

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