lakshmant
Agent
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2004
- Messages
- 46
FIRST OF ALL THIS IS NOT ANOTHER DD VS DTS THREAD ONLY OBSERVATIONS..
i was waiting to post this till i did my evaluations on the matter.
i had to chance to visit a local DTS mixing stage and watch 3 films being mixed for 5.1 surround sound at 24 bit 192 khz in pro tools.
It sounded phenomenal to say the least on the mixing stage.Now these same movies were released on DVD with DD and DTS on one disc .I went to the DVD authoring facility also no sweetening or any modification other than adjusting the tracks for DVD as against a theatrical mix was done ,which is done on all DVD's. DTS sounded very very close to the original master tape also the same master was used for DD and DTS. At 768 kbps there was only a slight drop in the high freq response as compared to pro tools made 24bit /192 master tape which we could A/B and some variation in the WAY the bass was playing,in the sense that it was very slightly lacking in definition at lower freq below 30 hz compared to the master and some very subtle nuances heard on the DTS mix theater at that freq were lost ,i mention very subtle nuances which one may never hear in a normal consumer setup at all other than that the mix was spot on in DTS on DVD and held up very well to the uncompressed master tape in quality even at 768 kbps.
What most impressed me was a seamless sound field achieved and DTS duplicated the surround vectors exactly like on the stage . Now on to dolby 5.1 at 448 kbps.the bass was punchy to start with and lacked the subtle variations in texture in songs back ground score NOT effects as these are not a good way to test bass Imho which DTS played out it in much more coherent and well refined manner low bass was there but what was missing were little details in the bass and it sounded like a viel was on the subwoofer masking the detail.Also the high frequency detail seemed to be greatly reduced and again as if somebody put something between you and the speaker may a cloth viel or something masking the HF part. It is the quality of the 24 bit tapes that we here so much resolution even in dolby .also the sound seemed to jump slightly between surround and front channels and not pan very smoothly enveloping the listener within the surround vectors atleast like DTS or the master tape.
This dolby comparison is to the original 24 bit tape.I am not saying dolby is bad it has it limitations and does not really put out everything the master tape does contains at a bitrate of 448 kbps IMHO
I got the DVD's home and same result with DD and DTS ,i have a THX home theater set up to 75 db spl c weighted with DVE with fronts at 45 degrees and i followed the AES multichannel studio guidelines document for speaker positioning and calibration.
this is not a DTS vs dolby war but my notes on quality issues...imho
i was waiting to post this till i did my evaluations on the matter.
i had to chance to visit a local DTS mixing stage and watch 3 films being mixed for 5.1 surround sound at 24 bit 192 khz in pro tools.
It sounded phenomenal to say the least on the mixing stage.Now these same movies were released on DVD with DD and DTS on one disc .I went to the DVD authoring facility also no sweetening or any modification other than adjusting the tracks for DVD as against a theatrical mix was done ,which is done on all DVD's. DTS sounded very very close to the original master tape also the same master was used for DD and DTS. At 768 kbps there was only a slight drop in the high freq response as compared to pro tools made 24bit /192 master tape which we could A/B and some variation in the WAY the bass was playing,in the sense that it was very slightly lacking in definition at lower freq below 30 hz compared to the master and some very subtle nuances heard on the DTS mix theater at that freq were lost ,i mention very subtle nuances which one may never hear in a normal consumer setup at all other than that the mix was spot on in DTS on DVD and held up very well to the uncompressed master tape in quality even at 768 kbps.
What most impressed me was a seamless sound field achieved and DTS duplicated the surround vectors exactly like on the stage . Now on to dolby 5.1 at 448 kbps.the bass was punchy to start with and lacked the subtle variations in texture in songs back ground score NOT effects as these are not a good way to test bass Imho which DTS played out it in much more coherent and well refined manner low bass was there but what was missing were little details in the bass and it sounded like a viel was on the subwoofer masking the detail.Also the high frequency detail seemed to be greatly reduced and again as if somebody put something between you and the speaker may a cloth viel or something masking the HF part. It is the quality of the 24 bit tapes that we here so much resolution even in dolby .also the sound seemed to jump slightly between surround and front channels and not pan very smoothly enveloping the listener within the surround vectors atleast like DTS or the master tape.
This dolby comparison is to the original 24 bit tape.I am not saying dolby is bad it has it limitations and does not really put out everything the master tape does contains at a bitrate of 448 kbps IMHO
I got the DVD's home and same result with DD and DTS ,i have a THX home theater set up to 75 db spl c weighted with DVE with fronts at 45 degrees and i followed the AES multichannel studio guidelines document for speaker positioning and calibration.
this is not a DTS vs dolby war but my notes on quality issues...imho