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

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