I've been trying to find out some info on dts audio because I am borrowing a Pink Floyd/DSOTM DVD (which has dts on it)... Is dts a good form of compression? Will it be 5.1 or 2.0? Has anyone heard this album? Thanks!

DTS, or "Digital Theater System" is another 5.1 audio system used commonly in DVD audio streams. IMHO, it really does not have that much a difference with far-more-common Dolby Digital.

In the case of the DVD you are talking about, the DTS encode (is that right?) of the classic Pink Floyd album, "Dark Side of the Moon" is supposed to be THE GIMMICK on that particular DVD in the first place. So I think it is pretty safe to say that very special attention was payed to that audio encode. It would be interesting, for sure, to listen to that treatment, but I seriously doubt it could do any good or harm to such an already established and beloved recording.

I would like to know the opinion of Hydrogen Audio's resident Floyd-phile, Roberto (altough his taste in spanish-sung rock is rather questionable )

in most cases DTS has better sound quality than DolbyDigital, because it's less compressed (standards are: 384/448 kbits for DD 5.1 and 768/1536 kbits for DTS 5.1). DTS has also the ability for 6.1 discrete sound, whereas DD has can only be 5.1 EX, means the extra rear center channel has it's own sound track with DTS 6.1 discrete but is only matrix coded into the two rear surround sound tracks with DD 5.1 EX.

-andy-

Hehe. Unfortunately, I didn't get hold of this DVD yet. Damned 3rd world country, things only arrive here with some months of delay. :B

Anyway, the quality differences between DTS and AC3 are subject of a very heaten debate. Even though logic hints that DTS is of higher quality (because of the much higher bitrate), technicians claim that the DTS algorithm is actually less efficient than AC3, and that's why it needs the higher bitrate. They say that the higher quality is only perceived because the DTS encoders cheat by raising the track level (something similar to what WMA does).



Haha! I was joking, I hate Mana.

Thnaks for the replys, I still have been trying to find out more, here is an interesting article:
http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.a...&article_id=444

But that is abpout the SACD version...speaking of which, which is better: a DTS version, mp3s from the 1992 remaster, or mp3's from the SACD version (recent)?

I would pick the 1992 remasters (and encode it if needed). But if you are asking to compare between two sets of MP3 (without much difference, as the supposed "quality gain" of the SACD would be pretty much lost in the MP3 encode) and a DTS stream?
That's comparing apples and oranges. Look, for "normal" uses (heaphones, stereo systems) I would go with the 1992 remasters, or even a good (-aps) MP3 encode. I don't really see much use on newer versions, but that is just me. And of course, if you are not going to be listening to it on a home theater system, then I doubt DTS is going to be much of a revelation.
SACD, at least for that album, seems like overkill to me.

You can't even rip SACD. And even if you could, it's in an audio format (PDM) that is fundamentally different from what computers use (PCM). So, even if you ripped it, Lame (or any other encoder for that matter) wouldn't be able to encode it.

And there is, or course, that small issue

If you could get at the DSD (SACD) datastream, it's mathematically easy to convert it to whatever flavour of PCM you require.

Take the 1-bit 2.82MHz signal
Convert it to a 24-bit 2.82MHz signal
Low pass filter at 20kHz (ish)
Resample to 44.1kHz (or 48kHz)
Dither to 16-bits if required
Encode as required.

It's slightly hypothetical since no-one has ripped SACD yet. Any quality advantage is lost in this conversion, unless the actual mastering is better.

If the mastering is sigificantly better on the SACD then on the CD, then analogue out > analogue in of a good sound card would produce a version which sounded better than the normal CD. For the release in question, there's no evidence that this is the case.

Cheers,
David.