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