Dolby 5.1 Vs. DTS 5.1

[Sal1950]

Why, on every blu ray disc I have, when I select Dolby 5.1, regardless of which version, it just sounds kind of dead compared to if I select DTS 5.1? Am I imagining it?

Doug

Maybe, and maybe your hearing some shortcoming somewhere in your decoding path?
Might be pretty easy to do a blind listening test to find out. First you have to do some measurement to determine (and fix if needed) if there is an difference in the loudness when switching between the two. You need to have them at least within 0.25 db to be inaudible.
Then if there's no tattletale noises when switching, you should be able to have someone else do the switching while you state which one your hearing.

 

[Owen Smith]

MLP is about the same size as FLAC and about the same size as DTS MA.

While the above is true, MLP encodes silence very poorly. This is unfortunate for authoring quad in DVD-A with silent Centre and Sub channels, they're not small. FLAC on the other hand encodes silence very efficiently.

 

[mandrix]

While the above is true, MLP encodes silence very poorly. This is unfortunate for authoring quad in DVD-A with silent Centre and Sub channels, they're not small. FLAC on the other hand encodes silence very efficiently.

Really? I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong, but I've never noticed that. Is this from personal observation? Now I will tell you that as the volume of almost anything gets real low in some frequencies I have problems because I've had tinnitus for >50 years non stop.

I'm thinking about this. A lossless encoding introducing noise. I suppose it could be true but I'd have to see it, like I say I don't trust my ears if it's in certain frequencies that resonate with are masked by the tinnitus.

 

[Owen Smith]

Really? I'm not going to tell you that you are wrong, but I've never noticed that. Is this from personal observation? Now I will tell you that as the volume of almost anything gets real low in some frequencies I have problems because I've had tinnitus for >50 years non stop.

I'm thinking about this. A lossless encoding introducing noise. I suppose it could be true but I'd have to see it, like I say I don't trust my ears if it's in certain frequencies that resonate with are masked by the tinnitus.

I did not say MLP encoding silence introduces noise. It's just that the way it encodes things losslessly it expects there to be sound, and as a result silence takes quite a lot of data to encode with MLP since it does not match what it expects music to look like.

 

[mandrix]

I did not say MLP encoding silence introduces noise. It's just that the way it encodes things losslessly it expects there to be sound, and as a result silence takes quite a lot of data to encode with MLP since it does not match what it expects music to look like.

AH. You didn't did you? I guess my reading skills are deteriorating. I read one thing and my brain jumped to another. My apologies.

 

[jimfisheye]

While the above is true, MLP encodes silence very poorly. This is unfortunate for authoring quad in DVD-A with silent Centre and Sub channels, they're not small. FLAC on the other hand encodes silence very efficiently.

True that.

FLAC is slick with not just silence using nearly zero space but all chunks of zeros reducing space (ie audio with low levels and thus lots of zeros in the higher bits). Dual mono (ie mono in both channels of a stereo container) only takes the space of mono as well.

I just realized that this is one of the roadblocks for people with certain stand alone hardware disc players! The ones that only recognize 2.0 or 5.1. There isn't space on the DVDA for 5.1 format for a quad title so they author it in 4.0. And the stand alone DVD player can't read it!

 

[MidiMagic]

More reasons why I like matrix. You can play any matrix recording on any system and at least hear the music.

There are too many incompatibilities and proprietaries and "cants" in digital.

 

[jimfisheye]

More reasons why I like matrix. You can play any matrix recording on any system and at least hear the music.

There are too many incompatibilities and proprietaries and "cants" in digital.

I appreciate the logic in that. Really truly. It's just that those reductions can be so greatly altering. Juxtaposed with the availability to do extremely audiophile 1:1 lossless with extremely affordable kit. Like a professional audio interface with 6 or 8 outputs for $300 and whatever computer you have lying around. The stubbornness some people have sticking to the AVR and stand alone disc players with restrictions, planned obsolescence, and plain old screw ups astounds me.

I guess the studio style setup looks scary or something when you're used to old school home stereo gear? Direct 1:1 files with no encoding feels like owning the copy of the music again. The encoded crap and unavailable software hidden in hardware (Atmos cough cough sniff) feels like it's someone elses and just out of reach. And now we have these desperate grifters running around with subscription software. "Yep. Turned your stuff off. Why? Because fu! Oh you still need that? Got a job due eh? Pay me extortion! Oh yes you DO need the more expensive upgrade! Yeah, old one isn't available anymore. Because fu!"

 

[Sal1950]

More reasons why I like matrix. You can play any matrix recording on any system and at least hear the music.
There are too many incompatibilities and proprietaries and "cants" in digital.

Same can be said for 78 rpm shellacs, they can be played on most any turntable.
But do you really want to listen to your music on awful sounding 100 + year old technology?
Speaking strictly for myself, "oh hell no"!
YMMV

 

[mandrix]

True that.

FLAC is slick with not just silence using nearly zero space but all chunks of zeros reducing space (ie audio with low levels and thus lots of zeros in the higher bits). Dual mono (ie mono in both channels of a stereo container) only takes the space of mono as well.

I just realized that this is one of the roadblocks for people with certain stand alone hardware disc players! The ones that only recognize 2.0 or 5.1. There isn't space on the DVDA for 5.1 format for a quad title so they author it in 4.0. And the stand alone DVD player can't read it!

A DVD5 disc can hold up to 74 minutes of 24/96 6 channel audio, according to Sonic. But that's audio. If there's a lot of overhead in menu structures, pictures, etc then I believe that's not accounted for in the figure although I think about 5% overhead is assumed.
The few people I know that author DVDA discs from Quad include basically silent channels for C & Lfe, so no AVR's should have a problem with playback. Disc players IDK, never had one that would not play quad that I can remember but all mine are Oppo's. Actually I still have an old Samsung as well.

 

[Owen Smith]

A DVD5 disc can hold up to 74 minutes of 24/96 6 channel audio, according to Sonic. But that's audio. If there's a lot of overhead in menu structures, pictures, etc then I believe that's not accounted for in the figure although I think about 5% overhead is assumed.
The few people I know that author DVDA discs from Quad include basically silent channels for C & Lfe, so no AVR's should have a problem with playback. Disc players IDK, never had one that would not play quad that I can remember but all mine are Oppo's. Actually I still have an old Samsung as well.

Don't forget though that most discs are DVD-A/V with DTS and Dolby Digital versions of the audio as well as MLP, to ensure they can be played by as many people as possible. This takes a fair amount of additional space up. All DVD-V players can play those and almost all AVRs can play the DTS. The only reason for keeping the Dolby Digital is a) that makes it a spec compliant disc (DTS only isn't strictly a valid DVD-V) and b) some car players can only decode Dolby Digital.

 

[Doug G.]

Maybe, and maybe your hearing some shortcoming somewhere in your decoding path?
Might be pretty easy to do a blind listening test to find out. First you have to do some measurement to determine (and fix if needed) if there is an difference in the loudness when switching between the two. You need to have them at least within 0.25 db to be inaudible.
Then if there's no tattletale noises when switching, you should be able to have someone else do the switching while you state which one your hearing.

Well, my question was rhetorical. I am not imagining it. I am playing these discs through a Sony BDP-S550. I know all about level matching and all that. The difference is frequency response and dynamics related and it's very apparent. No need for blind testing.

Doug

 

[Nyad]

I appreciate the logic in that. Really truly. It's just that those reductions can be so greatly altering. Juxtaposed with the availability to do extremely audiophile 1:1 lossless with extremely affordable kit. Like a professional audio interface with 6 or 8 outputs for $300 and whatever computer you have lying around. The stubbornness some people have sticking to the AVR and stand alone disc players with restrictions, planned obsolescence, and plain old screw ups astounds me.

I guess the studio style setup looks scary or something when you're used to old school home stereo gear? Direct 1:1 files with no encoding feels like owning the copy of the music again. The encoded crap and unavailable software hidden in hardware (Atmos cough cough sniff) feels like it's someone elses and just out of reach. And now we have these desperate grifters running around with subscription software. "Yep. Turned your stuff off. Why? Because fu! Oh you still need that? Got a job due eh? Pay me extortion! Oh yes you DO need the more expensive upgrade! Yeah, old one isn't available anymore. Because fu!"

Is there a step by step guide to ripping my Quad Blu-Rays to Mac for old people (hardware & software)?

 

[jimfisheye]

Is there a step by step guide to ripping my Quad Blu-Rays to Mac for old people (hardware & software)?

I use MakeMKV to rip the bluray to .mkv.
You could just play that with Kodi Media Player if you wish.
(I hate the GUI and presentation of this app but it decodes all the ringer formats correctly and that's just not trivial!)
Oh, or you could just play the bluray directly with Kodi. Playing blurays is a thing on Mac.
Or then convert the mkv to flac.

I don't trust the longevity of discs so I like ripping to files that can be backed up.

So... I'm a cheap bastard using freeware. There's probably something actually convenient out there! All this stuff is free and available for the Mac so, you know. I split the mkv file to chapters with MKVToolNix. Then convert to flac with ffmpeg. DVD Audio Extractor is useful for some DVDVs. ffmpeg decodes dts2496 fully FYI when you get one of those DVDs. Use DVD AE to rip those to .dts files (no decode). Then use ffmpeg to decode them. DVDAE still only grabs the core dts and screws it all up like most hardware players.

XLD is a convenient conversion app. It includes the decimation transcode for DSD to PCM conversion. For those of us who refuse to ever purchase DSD converters. SOX sample rate conversion. All kinds of stuff.

It occurrs to me to poke around a little or write a script to automate some of this. I usually like to mess around a little and look at the waveforms and such when I get something new anyway so I just keep doing that. The 21st century counterpart to handling an album cover?

 

[mandrix]

Don't forget though that most discs are DVD-A/V with DTS and Dolby Digital versions of the audio as well as MLP, to ensure they can be played by as many people as possible. This takes a fair amount of additional space up. All DVD-V players can play those and almost all AVRs can play the DTS. The only reason for keeping the Dolby Digital is a) that makes it a spec compliant disc (DTS only isn't strictly a valid DVD-V) and b) some car players can only decode Dolby Digital.

It does take a lot. I don't bother with a VIDEO_TS folder myself, though others do for sure. Yeah Dolby got their hooks in early on the DVD standard, no doubt.
I pretty much quit authoring DVD's almost as soon as I started. EoH admonished me to learn how, so I did, made a few DVD's, a few "hybrid" DVDA then pretty much forgot about it until recently.

 

[gene_stl]

@ssully

This is:
DTS, Dolby Digital and DVD: A History

This was a very interesting and informative read. Thank you for posting

And this too from AR Surround:

	Dolby Digital	Dolby Digital Plus	Dolby TrueHD
Stereo	✔	✔	✔
5.1-ch	✔	✔	✔
7.1-ch		✔	✔
Dolby Atmos		✔	✔
Lossless			✔
S/PDIF	✔
HDMI	✔	✔	✔
HDMI ARC	✔	✔
HDMI eARC	✔	✔	✔

Thank you, again!

 

[mandrix]

It does take a lot. I don't bother with a VIDEO_TS folder myself, though others do for sure. Yeah Dolby got their hooks in early on the DVD standard, no doubt.
I pretty much quit authoring DVD's almost as soon as I started. EoH admonished me to learn how, so I did, made a few DVD's, a few "hybrid" DVDA then pretty much forgot about it until recently.

You know, strictly speaking not having DTS or AC3 and the VIDEO_TS folder isn't against the DVDA spec. It seems they wanted to make a "swiss army knife " out of DVDA. I wonder in long run having broader player capability showed up in sales. Well we all know where DVDA went eventually...a shame really. I always figured keep lossy on DVD and lossless on DVDA but the WG4 made it the way it is, for better or worse.

 

[Owen Smith]

Bizarrely DVD-A/V with it's broad player compatibility has lost out to first SACD and more recently Blu Ray, neither of which can be played on anything like as many players. So I guess the broad player compatibility of DVD-A/V was ultimately irrelevant. I'm talking about multi channel playback here and purposely ignoring SACD's CD layer.

By the way, who or what is WG4 ?

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Bizarrely DVD-A/V with it's broad player compatibility has lost out to first SACD and more recently Blu Ray, neither of which can be played on anything like as many players. So I guess the broad player compatibility of DVD-A/V was ultimately irrelevant. I'm talking about multi channel playback here and purposely ignoring SACD's CD layer.

By the way, who or what is WG4 ?

Not as exciting as you, or I, would think:

https://www.mpegstandards.org/structure/video-coding/

 

[jimfisheye]

"DVD-A/V broad player compatibility" is ambiguous though. Sure, having the multiple formats on the disc leads to at least one of them playing on any random DVD player. Since we're specifically only interested in the format that delivers lossless multichannel audio 1:1, we need to only focus on the DVDA audio stream from that disc.

SACD getting popular? Well shit. Y'all fell for someone selling you new DACs that ran on this new digital "language". For the exact same end result as HD PCM. Even with obvious grifting in the hype - ie. always comparing DSD to 16/44.1 CD res PCM and pretending HD PCM didn't exist. This one is on the consumers, sorry. Congratulations.

Bluray (Sony throwing in the towel on the above DSD and returning to PCM) is simpler to work with. Holds both HD video and HD multichannel audio at the same time. More storage. Software is available and straightforward. The format war that started between DSD and PCM for a minute led to the software abominations available for DVDA and all kinds of players locking out one or the other.

For some reason everyone is acting like throwing a bluray drive into the computer is some big deal. Even though we all had to upgrade DVD drives a couple times along the way just the same. Weird.