I had a long Chat with Minnetonka Audio today about their products,such as D.T.S. SurCode and DVD-A software and where their Headed in the future! The following was their reply - Interesting reading!
: As far as higher sampling rates for DTS, right now that can only be done in-house at DTS. They do not even have that in their own hardware encoders. We hope a new developers kit will become available to us after it is implemented in their hardware. The last time we checked they were at least a year off from getting it in their hardware-so it would realistically be a couple of years before it would be available to you in a software form (and probably only in our full featured DVD version). Plus as far as 24/96 you must remember that DTS (and Dolby) are lossless encoding processes, meaning that they throw away alot of audio in the encoding process (to meet the 1.234 data rate for CD or 1.536 for DVD). Since it is already throwing alot of data away at 24/44.1 (at about a 4 to 1 ratio) its just going to throw away that much more audio at 24/96k as you have to meet the same data transfer rate as you were already compressing your 44.1 data to. But why use DTS when there is now DVD-A?
Did you know we have a DVD-A authoring software for under $500!!!!
The reason you must use DTS (or Dolby) is to get 6 channels of audio into the space of 2 channels of audio! DVD-V and CD's can only store stereo files! DTS and Dolby purpose is to data compress the 6 channels into the space of 2 (throwing away audio in a similar fashion as MP3's). The purpose of DVD-A is that it can already store 6 discrete channels of audio- so you don't need or ever want DTS or Dolby (as they lower sound quality but is needed in the case of DVD-V or CD as they are only stereo formats). So with DVD-A audio will sound exactly like it was recorded. However because of the limitation of DVD which has a data transfer rate of 9.6mb/s, surround 24/88 or 24/96 data must be compressed as it exceeds that data rate (it gets to be around 13mb/s or more). So DVD-A uses a special MLP lossless encoding for these files, which unlike DTS or Dolby, will not throw away any audio at all, so the audio will always stay pristine. We will be coming out with a SurCode MLP encoder later this fall. However the good news is that up to 24/192 stereo files or 24/48 surround is below the maximum DVD data rate, so needs no encoding. Our low cost discwelder STEEL software ($495) is a basic DVD-A authoring package and accepts all normal PCM files under the DVD data rate. Our discWelder CHROME ($2495) will also accept MLP encoded files and has many other advanced features. Check them out at our new site www.discwelder.com. Hope that answers everything.
Thanks,
Craig
: As far as higher sampling rates for DTS, right now that can only be done in-house at DTS. They do not even have that in their own hardware encoders. We hope a new developers kit will become available to us after it is implemented in their hardware. The last time we checked they were at least a year off from getting it in their hardware-so it would realistically be a couple of years before it would be available to you in a software form (and probably only in our full featured DVD version). Plus as far as 24/96 you must remember that DTS (and Dolby) are lossless encoding processes, meaning that they throw away alot of audio in the encoding process (to meet the 1.234 data rate for CD or 1.536 for DVD). Since it is already throwing alot of data away at 24/44.1 (at about a 4 to 1 ratio) its just going to throw away that much more audio at 24/96k as you have to meet the same data transfer rate as you were already compressing your 44.1 data to. But why use DTS when there is now DVD-A? Did you know we have a DVD-A authoring software for under $500!!!!
The reason you must use DTS (or Dolby) is to get 6 channels of audio into the space of 2 channels of audio! DVD-V and CD's can only store stereo files! DTS and Dolby purpose is to data compress the 6 channels into the space of 2 (throwing away audio in a similar fashion as MP3's). The purpose of DVD-A is that it can already store 6 discrete channels of audio- so you don't need or ever want DTS or Dolby (as they lower sound quality but is needed in the case of DVD-V or CD as they are only stereo formats). So with DVD-A audio will sound exactly like it was recorded. However because of the limitation of DVD which has a data transfer rate of 9.6mb/s, surround 24/88 or 24/96 data must be compressed as it exceeds that data rate (it gets to be around 13mb/s or more). So DVD-A uses a special MLP lossless encoding for these files, which unlike DTS or Dolby, will not throw away any audio at all, so the audio will always stay pristine. We will be coming out with a SurCode MLP encoder later this fall. However the good news is that up to 24/192 stereo files or 24/48 surround is below the maximum DVD data rate, so needs no encoding. Our low cost discwelder STEEL software ($495) is a basic DVD-A authoring package and accepts all normal PCM files under the DVD data rate. Our discWelder CHROME ($2495) will also accept MLP encoded files and has many other advanced features. Check them out at our new site www.discwelder.com. Hope that answers everything.
Thanks,
Craig
