Mitty
Supporting Actor
- Joined
- Jan 13, 1999
- Messages
- 886
I have, for the first time, experienced DTS.
I'm an admitted audio neophyte. A more accurate way to put it might be that when it comes to understanding the science of sound, I'm a moron. If Obi, or the elitist bastard himself, Mike Knapp, came to my humble "home theater" they would probably assume the fetal postion and weep softly upon taking an SPL reading and seeing (hearing?) the conditions in which I live.
I'm a visual guy, to be sure. I can talk video transfers, but audio? I'm a space cadet.
However, since my faithful 4 year old Panny A-300 died one fateful night, I have been in pro-logic land. Since my previous receiver was digital ready, with no internal processor, the player itself did all the DD processing. It was fine. I was happy. Then I wasn't. In the early days of DVD, players with built in processors were prevalent. Not anymore. In fact, since digital receivers are dirt cheap, players with built in processors are scarce and (generally) expensive. To make a long story short (too late), it was upgrade time. Pro-logic, while fine for TV/VHS, etc., just doesn't cut it for DVD, IMO. I find the centre channel doesn't always get the dialogue, surround activity comes out of nowhere, and I often find it hard to discern dialogue, especially at lower volumes.
Having gotten through Christmas, I realized that I hadn't incurred any credit card debt. Surely such a dire situation must be rectified. So, I bought myself a new receiver, a Sony STR-DE1075 (I think that's the model #, I know the 1075 part is right).
I hooked the beast up, and picked through my DVDs for DTS titles. I honestly had no idea I had so many dual format releases. So, I filled up my 5 disc changer with Jurassic Park III, Moulin Rouge, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Red Violin & A Nightmare Before Christmas. I also tried a few later, but I won't bore you with the details.
First, I must say that I can now sympathize with those who complained in the past about switch-on-the-fly being disabled. It is indeed a real pain in the ass for these types of comparisons. I will roll my eyes no more at those complaints. I think the only one I could switch on the fly was 'Hedwig' but I'm not certain of that (I would love it someone would kindly post a whole wack of switch-on-the-fly DTS/DD dual format releases).
My impressions (takes deep breath):
- DTS is louder on almost every disc I tried. That in itself, while not better per se, is a convenience. I find that audio levels on my receiver need to be considerably higher for DVD than for TV/VHS/DBS, etc. It's a convenience that selecting DTS bridges some (most? all?) of that gap.
- Volume adjusted, in DTS, most discs seem to have less compartmentalization of the front 3 channels. I don't know any other way to describe it than to say it almost sounds as if the sound is coming from one large speaker, rather than 3 separate ones. I guess a technical way to put this might be to say the front sound field sounds more natural. Of course, as with all of my findings, this will vary disc to disc. But this is my general (and early) observation.
- Dialogue seems easier to discern. As I mentioned before, I find pro-logic can make a lot of dialogue hard to hear, or maybe more accurately, to separate out from the other sounds. Discrete DD is a significant improvement on this, and DTS seems (to me) to be an even more significant improvement. Again, a general and early observation.
- Not a DTS specific observation, but I notice that there is a slight delay while the receiver's processor discerns what signal it is receiving. I notice it when the disc first cues up and the menu loads. For a split second, there is only silence. I never experienced this with the player with the internal processor. Am I safe in assuming this is normal?
Alright, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading a neophyte's foray into the world of dts. I looking forward to pedantically poring over the latest releases and bemoaning the lack of full bit rate releases and other hot button issues.
You may now begin welcoming me.
BTW, mods, this sort of skates the line between being a hardware and a software type of post. I'm putting it here since, frankly, I almost never surf the hardware area. I understand if you must move it, but pretty please can it stay here?
I'm an admitted audio neophyte. A more accurate way to put it might be that when it comes to understanding the science of sound, I'm a moron. If Obi, or the elitist bastard himself, Mike Knapp, came to my humble "home theater" they would probably assume the fetal postion and weep softly upon taking an SPL reading and seeing (hearing?) the conditions in which I live.
I'm a visual guy, to be sure. I can talk video transfers, but audio? I'm a space cadet.However, since my faithful 4 year old Panny A-300 died one fateful night, I have been in pro-logic land. Since my previous receiver was digital ready, with no internal processor, the player itself did all the DD processing. It was fine. I was happy. Then I wasn't. In the early days of DVD, players with built in processors were prevalent. Not anymore. In fact, since digital receivers are dirt cheap, players with built in processors are scarce and (generally) expensive. To make a long story short (too late), it was upgrade time. Pro-logic, while fine for TV/VHS, etc., just doesn't cut it for DVD, IMO. I find the centre channel doesn't always get the dialogue, surround activity comes out of nowhere, and I often find it hard to discern dialogue, especially at lower volumes.
Having gotten through Christmas, I realized that I hadn't incurred any credit card debt. Surely such a dire situation must be rectified.
So, I bought myself a new receiver, a Sony STR-DE1075 (I think that's the model #, I know the 1075 part is right).I hooked the beast up, and picked through my DVDs for DTS titles. I honestly had no idea I had so many dual format releases. So, I filled up my 5 disc changer with Jurassic Park III, Moulin Rouge, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, The Red Violin & A Nightmare Before Christmas. I also tried a few later, but I won't bore you with the details.
First, I must say that I can now sympathize with those who complained in the past about switch-on-the-fly being disabled. It is indeed a real pain in the ass for these types of comparisons. I will roll my eyes no more at those complaints.
I think the only one I could switch on the fly was 'Hedwig' but I'm not certain of that (I would love it someone would kindly post a whole wack of switch-on-the-fly DTS/DD dual format releases).My impressions (takes deep breath):
- DTS is louder on almost every disc I tried. That in itself, while not better per se, is a convenience. I find that audio levels on my receiver need to be considerably higher for DVD than for TV/VHS/DBS, etc. It's a convenience that selecting DTS bridges some (most? all?) of that gap.
- Volume adjusted, in DTS, most discs seem to have less compartmentalization of the front 3 channels. I don't know any other way to describe it than to say it almost sounds as if the sound is coming from one large speaker, rather than 3 separate ones. I guess a technical way to put this might be to say the front sound field sounds more natural. Of course, as with all of my findings, this will vary disc to disc. But this is my general (and early) observation.
- Dialogue seems easier to discern. As I mentioned before, I find pro-logic can make a lot of dialogue hard to hear, or maybe more accurately, to separate out from the other sounds. Discrete DD is a significant improvement on this, and DTS seems (to me) to be an even more significant improvement. Again, a general and early observation.
- Not a DTS specific observation, but I notice that there is a slight delay while the receiver's processor discerns what signal it is receiving. I notice it when the disc first cues up and the menu loads. For a split second, there is only silence. I never experienced this with the player with the internal processor. Am I safe in assuming this is normal?
Alright, if you've made it this far, thanks for reading a neophyte's foray into the world of dts. I looking forward to pedantically poring over the latest releases and bemoaning the lack of full bit rate releases and other hot button issues.
You may now begin welcoming me.
BTW, mods, this sort of skates the line between being a hardware and a software type of post. I'm putting it here since, frankly, I almost never surf the hardware area. I understand if you must move it, but pretty please can it stay here?
