Tomita Dolby Surround CD's (1 Viewer)

[Eric Fischer]

Hey All -

Just picked up these Tomita "Dolby Surround Edition" CD's cheap (and for fun). They are from 1991 and for the life of me I can't figure out how the heck to play 'em in surround. I have a Denon 1920, which plays just about anything, and a Yamaha HTR-5890 but I'm stumped here. Thanks in advance!

 

[Mark-P]

Uh...select Dolby pro-logic on your Yamaha?

 

[Eric Fischer]

Yeah, but that's kind "fake" surround isn't it? It's not like it's decoding a file on the CD itself. You could do that with any CD, right?

 

[gene c]

I think your cd's are much like the Dolby Surround encoded vhs tapes of the '90's. They were also 2 channel but must have had some type of Dolby Surround encoded in those 2 channels for extraction and playback in an early 4.0 surround sound system. Cd's/vhs tapes that have this Dolby Surround will probably sound better then regular 2 channel stereo converted to 5.1 by Dolby ProLogic.

This link to a wiki explains it better than I could.

 

[Mark-P]

Originally Posted by Eric Fischer

Yeah, but that's kind "fake" surround isn't it? It's not like it's decoding a file on the CD itself. You could do that with any CD, right?

There is nothing "fake" about Dolby surround. It is 4 channels matrixed into 2. No it's not discrete like Dolby Digital 5.1, but CDs can only offer 2-channel PCM sound and yes they can be encoded with Dolby surround just like any stereo movie. If the "Dolby Surround" logo is on the packaging of the CD, then it is encoded in this process and playing it back only requires a Dolby pro-logic receiver.

 

[Eric Fischer]

Got it - so that's the key. Looking at the CD there's only .aiff PCM files. So you're saying that even tho they play back in stereo just fine, they have Dolby encoding in the file also. Makes some sense. Played it back decoding it with my receiver and they sounded very interesting. Not really discrete, but kind of cool - especially for 1999! Thanks for the conversation gang.

 

[Nick Martin]

The only sure-fire way to get discrete 5.1 surround on a conventional audio CD is on a DTS Music Disc, or DTS-CD.


With that, pop it into any DVD player or a CD player with a digital audio out connected to a receiver and it's good to go.


Damn shame even those have pretty much died out, considering how they were far more compatible than DVD-Audio or SACD ever were.