Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Why do My CDs sound bad after Diana Krall?

So I bought the Diana Krall Love Songs album 5.1 DTS version,...I tried to find the other albums with no luck

Aaaaaand....

1. All my CDs sound bad or not so good to me now, even my Norah Jones CD..which I thought was pretty good.

2. What is 5.1 DTS? It's not SACD, my player can't play SACD. It's not DVD-A, since I can't play it through my analog cables. Is this a CD technology of some sort? It sounds SO, SO good, as good as my Blue Man Group Complex DVD-A to me...

Ahhh....I'm buying ALL of Diana Krall's stuff. As one poster said, her voice is made for Axiom speakers...

>>As one poster said, her voice is made for Axiom speakers...

I think that was me

As far as I know the DTS disks are just like DVDs but without the video and without the mandatory Dolby Digital soundtrack. Decoding is just the same as the optional DTS soundtrack on a DVD.

They sure sound nice don't they. Didn't know Love Songs was available on DTS, have to go look for it.

Um, uh,... most everything, uh, sounds good, um...on my...er...

Uh...oh, never mind....

Yasa, I know EXACTLY what you mean. I have Several of here albums in SACD and DVD-A. Whoever is responsible for her mixing and mastering really knows his stuff.

Love Scenes is the only Diana Krall CD offered in the DTS 5.1 format. But you can get her Live In Paris concert DVD which has the sound track in both DTS 5.1 and Dolby Digital 5.1. She's almost as nice to look at as she is to listen to.

I couldn't tell, from your post, if your DVD player can play DVD-A, but even if it can't, all her DVD-A discs have a Dolby Digital 5.1 track that will play on standard DVD players.

When I Look In Your Eyes DVD-A

The Look Of Love DVD-A

Also there is a new format called "DualDisc." It is a two sided disc. It has a standard (redbook) CD on one side, and a DVD on the other. The DVD side will have various live performance clips, and behind the scenes stuff. In addition it will have a complete 5.1 version of the CD.

The Girl In The Other Room is available in the DualDisc format.

Be sure to check around to see if you can find better prices than the links above. You never know.

I was looking at some DualDiscs at Barnes & Noble. It says on the case that the CD side of the disc may not play properly on your CD player because of "slightly different format" or something to that effect.

Anybody have more info on that?

DTS discs are not DVDs. They are CDs with DTS encoding on them. AFAIK.

Yup. You only need a CD player with a digital out to read them.

Interesting. Have to stock up on those puppies...

Or, if your CD player doesn't have a digital out, your DVD player can do it.

... and a DTS decoder.

Bren R.

Thanks for the info Ajax...

If DTS 5.1 is just a CD technology...what's the difference with Multi channel audio (DVD-A/SACD), which is 5.1 as well (other than the higher bit rate or whatever...higher something!...lol)

The way I understood it was that CD is only stereo...sorry if this is a dummie question...

Yasa, although I'm not familiar with the CD that you like so much, I'll comment in case everyone else is asleep. Nearly all CDs are at most stereo(some are mono, of course), but the DTS 5.1s fit as many as six channels on a CD by compressing the data so that it fits on the CD. The DTS decoder(usually in the receiver)then processes the data with little if any audible loss from the compression(although it is called a "lossy" compression system). The DTS 5.1 doesn't necessarily have any advantage over a regular CD just on a pure sound basis, but of course it does have the advantage of the surround channels. If the surround factor is one of the main things that you liked about it, note that you can get some of that effect by applying surround processing such as DPLII to regular CDs, although of course they don't have the discrete surround channels that the DTS 5.1 does.

Ahh yes, that explains why the data rates don't go through the roof. DVD audio tracks are MP3 encoded (lossy) while CD audio tracks are not.

That means all the posts we (all of us, not you and I) made a month or so ago arguing about the data rate across a coax cable and the required bandwidth are all wrong too