Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners QS8's are up!

My new QS8's are up and running! Thanks to everyone for the vote of confidence on the mounting. Even though as you all said, mounting them on the walls behind the couch may not be ideal, but these speakers are great!. Watched the depth charge scene in U571, and the sound effects of the explosions and breaking glass were just amazing. Already saving my pennies for my next purchase, M60's! Thanks to everyone! Allen

Glad, but not surprised, you're pleased. Seems like we've been getting a bunch of new satisfied posters recently. Very gratifying. I love my QS8s also. If you are able, post some pics, though you might want to wait until you get your M60s. Happy listening.

do watch the pirates of the carribean in DTS mode, great sound track and QS8s are a blast with the movie

How much difference is there between the DTS version and the DD version? I have Pirates. In the 2 minutes or so that I listened to the DTS track, I couldn't hear any differences.

What is the difference between the 2 in your opinion? Maybe I'm just missing something.

IMHO i find that there is more sourround information on DTS,the subtle sounds are more defined on DTS than on dolby....my buddy concurs with this too....

pardon me if you were looking for some technical explanation:), i feel the whole DTS experience is better than dolby.....

Let's see if we can bang on this for a bit. I'm in Michael's camp. Can anyone explain, technically, the real advantages of DTS over Dolby. My ears aren't picking up much of a difference.

Alan - are you out there somewhere?

First let me say I am by no means very knowledgeable regarding these formats "But I did stay in a holiday inn express last night."

My understanding of it is that DD does more compression than DTS, in some sense of "compression." I think it combines channels above some threshold (15kHz?), and I've also read that they occasionally alter the original soundtrack and move some of the effects around a bit for the benefit of stereo listeners. DTS does not ever combine channels, and does not alter the original soundtrack.

Ray3,

I was in the "couldn't hear a big difference" camp until I A/B'ed btw. the DD and DTS soundtracks of LoTR:FoTR. Listen to Cate Blanchett's narration during the introductory scene. To me, the DTS version was crisper.

here is a link with a decent amount of technical info regarding the two.

Andrew - thanks, that was an in-depth and technical explanation.

Pete - was the difference with Cate's narrative noticeable, stunning or jaw-dropping?

Hmmmmm. As I sit here, I don't believe I have gone into the menu of a DVD and set it to DTS (assume Dolby is the default). This is where I would generate the DTS audio - correct? (I have my receiver set to "auto"). Said another way, I don't need to do anything with the receiver to get the DTS audio after I set the DVD Player/menu, do I?

Ray

You got it Ray. Just go into the DVD menu; look for "Audio," "Setup," "Language," or combinations thereof; select DTS (if available); and that's it. I'm always surprised to find audio choices in a menu entitled "Language." They hide the audio setup in some strange menus sometimes.

I don't know how your Denon works, but my Onkyo has a selectable display, and one of the selections shows the audio format that is playing. I use that one regularly, so it confirms that I'm hearing DD, or DTS, or stereo, or PLII, or whatever.

Ray,

It's a noticeable difference.

Hi Ray3,

Cable modem problems kept me out of circulation for a day or so.
Dolby Digital and dts are both "lossy" data-compression systems that use perceptual encoding algorithms to reduce the amount of storage space needed for 5.1 or more discrete channels of sound on a DVD or movie film in a cinema.

If all six channels ran at the same data rate as a 2-channel CD, there wouldn't be enough space for all the data and high-quality video on a DVD (or movie in a cinema).

dts runs at a higher data rate than Dolby Digital, but it still throws away tons of data. I've participated in several professional comparisons of the two systems using the same soundtrack, and they were essentially indistinguishable.

However, it's my opinion that when dts masters a soundtrack there are slight "tweaks" in tonal balance and EQ to make it sound different from a Dolby Digital track, although dts denies this and claims that because of its higher data rate, dts is intrinsically more "revealing." Both systems run at a fraction of the data rate of a 2-channel PCM data stream from a CD.

An engineer at Axiom disagrees with me and we're going to continue this discussion over a beer. . .

Stay tuned.

Regards,

Thanks Alan. I think what I'm hearing here is that a blind A/B test might not reveal much of a difference and that you wouldn't want to bet the farm on the extra audio DTS provides.

Said another way, if I flip on the DTS switch it wouldn't hurt, but it probably doesn't matter much if I listen to DD 5.1 instead.

For what's it worth, I agree with Alan. To my very
"bias" ears, watching a DVD in DD seem to be much
more "enveloping" then DTS. But yes, DTS can sound
crisper. Try an IMAX movie. You'll see. :-)

In reply to:

---

An engineer at Axiom disagrees with me and we're going to continue this discussion over a beer. . .

---

Hmm... so all I have to do to get out for a beer is disagree with you?

Again, to my ears (without running a trojan to capture bitstream data for comparison between the two)... DTS' compression seems to be psychoacoustically better at the same (or nominally the same) bitrate as Dolby Digital's. Much in the same way you can compress a PCM stereo audio track with u-Law encoding and with MPEG Layer 3 and get a file roughly the same size, but the MP3 will sound better. I'm not so sure this battle is that cut and dried as just how MUCH information is thrown away, but has more to do with WHAT is thrown away.

Of course, I could be talking out my as... er, hat - and DTS might just play some delay and phase games that make it sound the way it does.

Bren R.