mr. cummings:



We haven't said it's better. Please try to pay attention. We've both said that we feel it's better, given our personal experiences. Sanjay's right: it's about opinions and tastes.

Why are you insisting that we share your opinion?

Then, e.e. wrote:


That's fine. Neither I nor Sanjay have claimed to be an expert on all available SACDs. In fact, I claim quite the opposite for myself: I don't even have a SACD player. I've heard the demos, of course, so I know enough to feel it's a good format, but I won't adopt it until I can walk into any music store and find a reasonable selection.



Thanks for the hot tip. Now let's hope that the music industry gets its act together P.D.Q.



Only five?

Oh dear, you seem to have missed the point of Logic 7. (Hint: it's not the "logic" part that's important.)




I proposed that very question on the SMR forums a few weeks ago. If DD is more faithful to the original master than DTS but people seem to like the unnatural degradation and boosting of levels in DTS, then does this point out a failing in the original mastering?

But regardless, whether you like it or not, in every single instance where the DTS was level-matched and ABX compared against DD, nobody was able to distinguish between them. And since neither sounds appreciably better than the other, yet Dolby Digital can be compressed to occupy less data real estate, I guess that takes care of the "superiority" of DTS.



Whoopie. Find a DD soundtrack made from the same master, boost the bass up about 10 dB, and I'll bet you couldn't tell them apart.



Certainly, they produce better marketting and advertising. I love how they claimed that one of their weaknesses (poor compression) was instead a strength (higher bitrate). That was a brilliant stroke of strategy worthy of Bose itself!

BTW, I've met the folks from both DTS and Dolby Labs on a number of occasions. Have you? (And I'll sure bet that soundhound has! )



In what way is Dolby Labs a 900 ton gorilla? Your rhetoric is intriguing, but I don't see the logic in your metaphor.

Jeff

I'll go one further with the current supply of SACDs. Getting one that you like is sort of like getting a great quality audiophile disc that you like. If you don't like the content, who cares about the sound?? That's why I think DSOTM is also getting such good press. It's a good mix of music that is liked by a large percentage of the population. If you like classical, there are plenty of great SACDs out there. If you like rock, there are again plenty out there, some, of course, being better mixed than others. If you like jazz, well, again, there are plenty out there. It may not be every title in the world and it may not be your favorite album yet, but it's growing.

My major problem with the SACD format stems from a personal experience. I had the oppurtunity to work on a recording session with a popular artist. I will not name the artist as it would be detrimental to the studio I was working with. Let's just say it's a name you would recognize. I was there while they tracked to 16/44.1 hard disc. I was also standing there when the engineer said that the overdubs were being sampled at 24/96 into Pro Tools HD. Now the important comment. I was also there when the engineer said there will be a SACD of this album in the future.

This is what I believe to be the biggest issue with DSD/SACD technology. If you don't use it from the earliest stages, what's the point? Also, if you record DSD, edit in hi-res PCM, then release the disc as a SACD; isn't this the same thing? Give me a box that upsamples to DSD and I can do the same thing at home. I would love to see more pure DSD projects and direct analog master to DSD transfers. I would also love to see the record companies tell it like it is. Somehow, I don't see that day anytime soon....

I don't doubt one bit that on whatever consumer DVDs that might be listened to that contain both DD and DTS, the DTS has sounded "better" to some listeners. I've heard this myself with LOTR, but that "better" was the result of goosed up surrounds, and an overall level increase in this instance.

I seriously doubt that anybody here has had the opportunity to be present when representatives from both DD and DTS were on the same dubbing stage, at the same time, with their best encoder-decoders, and have compared them in real time to an original 35 mm magnetic master of a 5.1 film. I have, and like I said in my original post, neither myself or anybody else present (all sound professionals, about 10 in all) could not tell a significant difference between the DD and DTS versions, except for hiss in my instance (with no program material).

I'm sorry if this flies in the face of some firm beliefs of some superiority of DTS, but when all variables are removed, and everybody is playing by the same rules, I'm afraid they are pretty equal in sound quality.

Like a lot of "hot" issues in audio such as cables or what-have-you that marketing types like to give great importance to, the reality is much more mundane in nature.

For the record, I think that both sound unaccaptable when compared directly to an original master, either digital or analog.



[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited May 21, 2003).]

Soundhound,

Precisely. Pyschoacoustics rears its ugly head: louder sounds "better" to even the most informed listener. But that doesn't speak of the superiority of the format: you could always equally goose up the levels of DD if you wanted and once more level the playing field.

But what would be the result? You'd get the same kind of volume escalation you get with radio stations, and the same resulting compression of the signal to achieve it.

I think DD's got the right approach: try to stay as accurate as possible while achieving reasonable compression. Now obviously, something with no data loss like MLP is superior, but in terms of design philosophy, at least Dolby Labs had the right idea.

Jeff

jeff says:

whoopie. find a dd soundtrack made from the same master, boost the bass up about 10db, and i'll bet you couldn't tell them apart.
__________________________________________

now, THAT'S funny.

let's bet your MC-12. wait...what bass gets boosted? all 5 channels, or 6? or, is it 7? i haven't been paying attention.

I bet the same could be said of you through all your schooling, too.

Listen, if you want to believe that DTS is better than DD despite the lack of any supporting evidence and in the face of reliable contradicting evidence, go right ahead.

It makes no difference to me, and the nice folks at DTS have families to feed just like anybody else. You should also buy some nice Bose speakers to go with your DTS discs, since Bose makes the best speakers, too, in much the same way that DTS makes the best algorithm.

Knock yourself out. You're obviously much too smart for us here. Couldn't slip one by you, could we? Nosireebob. You're just too clever for us by a half.

Jeff

Who's trying to sway anybody? Do you really think that posting my personal preferences is going to change peoples minds? Look over my posts (none have been edited); where did I ever give the impression that I was stating a fact and not my opinion? 500 titles are trivial amount compared to what's available on CD, and hardly any of those SACD titles are ones I'm interested in buying. Is that your opinion or are you stating a matter of fact? He has scratched the surface, and he has no interest in going any deeper. He told me so himself (I talk in my sleep). I used to think that way until I actually tried it and listened, at which point I realized that it was far from pointless. That's OK; most of them started off as PCM (or analog). DSD is no magic bullet; there is very little being recorded natively or mixed in DSD. More often than not, DSD simply serves as the final distribution medium. See this report from Surround Professional 2003. That would be a good way to compare them if I wanted to find out how they DIDN'T sound on my system. Instead I prefer to do the comparison on my gear, in my room, with my ears. It is, after all, the system I'll actually be using when listening to music on a day to day basis (not one with 5 full range speakers and analog bass management). As a company:

- DTS theatrical system was in trouble from day one, when a Frenchman sued them for patent infringements and DTS had to settle out of court.

- DTS couldn't come up with a codec that worked within the data space left over from DTV transmission. So they worked with Widescreen Review magazine to give the impression that they were being conspired against due to politics and business strong-arming.

- There's the case of an infamous DTS press release announcing a number of high profile manufacturers as licensees when none had actually signed agreements and in some cases hadn't even negotiated with DTS. All those manufacturers were practically "forced" into supporting the format due to their customers belief that it had been "announced".

- A Parasound rep at CEDIA that year was complaining that his company was seriously considering being the first manufacturer to announce their lack of DTS support, he was so annoyed. Of course, market forces meant this couldn't happen, and he knew it.

- DTS claimed their codec sounded better than AC-3. But once studios got their own DTS encoders and no longer had to send soundtracks to DTS for encoding, suddenly many of these differences seemed to vanish. I remember the first DD vs DTS blind listening test that Home Theatre magazine conducted, where they couldn't reliably pick the two codecs apart. The staff was shocked. Brent Butterworth was shocked. As a longtime subscriber of Widescreen Review magazine (who had swallowed the DTS propaganda wholesale), I was shocked! Even worse than no benefit was the fact that the codec was so inefficient and took up so much space that supplementary material often had to be left off DTS DVDs.

- DTS weren't ready with their codec for DVD standard. Again, they and WSR had the PR spin machine paint them as underdogs, giving all sorts of reasons why they weren't being included in the original DVD spec. All sorts of reasons but the truth. Turns out a whole generation of DVD players had to pass before DTS was ready with their DVD implementation.


- When DTS finally did show up on DVD, it was introduced with the sample rate of 48kHz rather than 44.1kHz which was the standard on LD. The only decoder at the time, the Motorola 56009 couldn't reliably handle the required number of computations without getting far too warm and soft failing. The DTS code was so sloppy that companies like Meridian and Lexicon re-wrote it, which meant the 56009 could just about cope, but only with the aid of a heat sink and fan.

- Next they come out with DTS's own version of Surround EX, promoting the sonic advantages of a discrete surround-back channel. The science behind this technology is full of holes, as it asks us to hear dubious sonic improvements where our hearing is at its worst (behind our heads). And, unlike even their own ES matrix scheme, ES discrete means that every channel takes a sonic hit: encoding a sixth discrete channel reduces the data available to every other channel.

- Then comes DTS's Neo:6 matrix decoder, with terrible steering logic and artifacting. Mind you, this is not a judgement I made in a vacuum: anyone with a Lex processor or H/K receiver can instantly compare Neo:6 to PL II and L7.

- And now DTS has come up with their "96/24" technology. Every press release of theirs would have people believe that they've achieved six channels of DVD-A sound quality that can be passed through an S/PDIF connection. Nothing could be further from the truth. A lossy/perceptual encoding scheme that attempts to preserve sounds outside our hearing range. Only at DTS.

- And finally (my favourite DTS story): one of the principals at DTS telephoned a reporter at the British home theatre magazine 'What TV & Video' and threatened him with physical violence after he had had written an unflattering article about the viability of the format. That actually resulted in the magazine's editor calling the police.

DTS, the company, has a consistent and chronic history of misdirection, lies and bogus science; from the very beginning.
There are reasons Dolby has acheived industry success that continues to elude DTS. Dolby delivers on its technologies and, as a company, they are extremely professional. And unlike DTS, Dolby never claimed that AC-3 was high end audiophile quality. Unlike DTS, Dolby's surround-back channel scheme doesn't require lowered resolution for any of the channels. Unlike DTS, Dolby is licensing a real hi-res format (MLP) instead of a bogus one (DTS 96/24). Unlike DTS, Dolby has developed and licensed a terrific matrix decoder (PL II) instead of a pointless one (Neo:6).

Get the point? (Please say yes; my little brain hurts too much to continue).

Best,
Sanjay

Sanjay,

Wow. I'm so glad I'm on your side. I'd hate to be on the other side of a debate from you!

Jeff

It's usually in the LFE. A good example of the typical DTS bass boost can be found on this DVD-A , which has DD and DTS tracks encoded from the same master. Pay attention to the 3 graphs that compare the lower frequencies of both formats to the MLP track (which is an exact copy of the original master). Notice something different about the DTS graph?

Best,
Sanjay

At least up till a couple years ago (last time I checked), DTS used a "propritary" bass EQ curve on their dubbers for playing back 35mm magnetic film soundtracks that they encoded (this EQ is the same thing in principle to the RIAA EQ curve for playing back LPs). This EQ just happened to boost the bass above what was flat. Funny how that works........

Now that most soundtracks are mixed to 24 bit digital, the soundtrack exists as computer files: who knows what they do with them when they encode in-house! Sometimes they have used the "safety" 35 mm magnetic master to encode - using this, aside from the EQ issue, they potentially get the benefit of a layer of analog tape sound.


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited May 22, 2003).]