Fox: Please Drop DTS-MA for Dolby TrueHD (1 Viewer)

[ppltd]

Guess that must mean that Warner, Paramount, Universal, Sony, MGM and Disney had faulty ears, as they seem to have passed on DTS-HD MA and went with TrueHD or PCM.

 

[Shane Martin]

My suspicion and it's merely that, they paid them more

 

[ppltd]

This is probably the most realistic reason for Fox's decision to go DTS over TrueHD. Normal business dealings. It is certainly a contributing factor on how the studios selected sides to begin with.

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I'm mainly worried because of the amount of the music in the film. Even Amir from Microsoft, who is a huge supporter of lowering bitrates said that 1.5 DD+ is "good enough" except in cases of "music". So the forthcoming 640kbps track will certainly not be up to potential. I still think every film, no matter what it is deserves at the very least a TrueHD track, but Saturday Night Fever really needs it, IMHO.

 

[ppltd]

I am not sure I would worry too much. The theatrical release of this film was the old Dolby system. I am not sure TrueHD is going to gain much for this movie over Dolby+, unless they are completely reworking the soundtrack.

 

[Roogs Benoit]

There is no DD Vs. DTS debate when it comes to quality of their lossless systems. They are both just that...lossless.
There are many factors at play here that make a studio choose one over the other and it has nothing to do with the studio being paid off by Dolby or DTS. They don't work that way.
I have been comparing these systems, running tests and working with Dolby and DTS for the past two years on these HD encoders and tools.
There are so many factors involved in choosing what format to use/support that the consumers myopic view of this system is better than that system based on two or maybe even up to three factors is almost comical to me.
Remember this is a business, not a hobby or interest of the studios. Part of this business includes the production challenges and costs associated with creating DVD's.
It may be a production factor that pushed one format over the other instead of data rate or audio quality alone.
They are both better than what you will hear in a theater (unless you see it in Digital Cinema which has 24bit uncompressed audio). Studios offering 24 bit 5.1 PCM on their DVD's are giving you an exact duplicate of their printmaster. It doesn't get any better than that.
Dolby True HD and DTS MA are as good as PCM if you can take full advantage of decoding the lossless audio.

BTW: DTS now supports dialog normalization.

Dial norm is not a bad thing when used properly. What most of you probably don't know is that dial norm also affects the compression settings. It helps determine where the threshold is for whatever type of compression is used. This is only when playing back with the compression ON. Without compression ON the dial norm only affects overall playback level, nothing else.

Roogs

 

[Jeff Adkins]

I'm not quite getting what you're saying in terms of compression. If it's lossless compression then I don't see how DN could help at all. DTS supports DN but I remember reading at AVS that it's not applicable to DTS-MA. I can't prove that, but that's what I read somewhere over there.

Here's an interesting article explaining DN.
Dialogue Normalization: Friend Or Foe?

I still don't see the point when we're dealing with trying to sound as close to the master as possible. I'd rather have the same sound as the master (or as close to it as possible). TrueHD is the farthest from master quality of the 3 (DTS-MA, PCM, and TrueHD).

 

[Roogs Benoit]

When I mentioned compression I was talking about playback compression, not encoding compression. You know, standard compression, light or sometimes it's even called night mode on the receiver.
Sorry about the confusion.

I don't get how you can say that TrueHD is farthest from master quality of the three.
They are each lossless. That is these encoding schemes are bit for bit same as the PCM master upon decode. If they were not bit for bit then they couldn't be considered lossless.
DTS-MA and DolbyTrueHD are exactly like the master.

 

[Roogs Benoit]

I maybe should have said "Dynamic range control" instead of compression.
They are basically the same thing.
You are compressing the dynamic range just not changing the timbre of the audio like you would in the music recording industry.

 

[PeterTHX]

Whaaaa?

You're mixing up DD+ I'm guessing. TrueHD is advanced Meridian Lossless Packing. Nothing is thrown away. Fact are most BD players out there support it, it has low CPU overhead, and it WORKS.

 

[PeterTHX]

News today:

DTS to Demonstrate Master Audio

Blu-ray Disc DTS will be demonstrating their lossless audio solution, DTS-HD Master Audio (MA), for the first time at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan. They will make use of a high-end desktop PC and Blu-ray drive to show off their accomplishment. DTS-HD MA is a competing lossless audio track approved for use on Blu-ray. No playback devices has yet been put on the market which can handle this audio codec, so hopefully this demonstration will be followed by the announcement of such hardware.

Blu-ray fans will note that Fox uses DTS-HD MA for all their releases (as well as the releases of MGM titles). As of yet, only the DTS core could be extracted for playback, which while still better than DVD, was not the lossless experience that Blu-ray fans have come to expect. Stay tuned for any further developments.

Sheesh. After nearly a year they are finally demoing it? Why oh why Fox?

 

[Robert George]

To Roogs Benoit...

I'd like to hear your comments on the following scenario. Which, in your opinion, would be better overall audio for the home invironment, a 24-bit Dolby Digital Plus track at 1.5 mb/s data rate, or a 16-bit lossless/PCM track?

Thanks.

 

[Roogs Benoit]

It depends on the master and what type of program material too.
But without comparing the two I would say 16bit PCM over a lossy interpretation of a 24bit master.
I have to say that I recommend creating lossy tracks from 24bit elements rather than 16bit ones. The difference is much greater in the lossy format when comparing the same program material created from a 24bit master Vs. a 16bit master. The 16bit track in the lossy format sounds considerably worse than one created from a 24bit element.

So if I had to create a 16bit PCM track for DVD and a DD track. I would make the DD track from the 24bit master and not the 16bit one.

 

[Adam Barratt]

I find it amazing that some people still blindly support everything DTS-related, as if these three letters possess some mystical or magical properties; more than one post in this thread made me laugh out loud. Parts of this discussion seem like a flashback to 1998.

I also can't believe people are still throwing Dialog Normalization around like some sort of boogyman, simply illustrating that they don't really understand what it does.

Adam

 

[Edwin-S]

Man. I can't believe that there are people basically advocating for one company to have a monopoly when it comes to providing audio options on HD home video formats. What ever happened to choice? Maybe some people like DTS so they want the option to listen to it. What exactly is wrong with that?

I also don't think it is more efficient to have to supply a lossless track and a lossy track side by side on the same disc. At least DTS has a methodology that allows the lossy track for legacy gear to be extracted from the lossless one.

 

[Cees Alons]

Sorry, Edwin, but that's not true. The lossy track of DTS-HD MA comes as an extra.
TrueHD takes less space than DTS-HD MA.


Cees

 

[Douglas Monce]

Dialog Normalization = much ado about nothing.

 

[PeterTHX]

We've also established that a TrueHD & 640 DD core track is still smaller and more efficient than a DTS-MA track core or not. There are times when the TrueHD track on Letters From Iwo Jima dips below 1Mbit. How is that less efficient than a DTS track running a MINIMUM of 1.5Mbps?

 

[PeterTHX]

DTS = The Bose of compression.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Thanks Peter I haven't laughed that hard in a LONG time!!!!