My Blu Ray player does not have Master Audio. It has DTS-HD. I used to think that I was getting almost the level of DTS-HD Master Audio. But then DTS-HD got cancelled by DTS, leaving only DTS-HD Master Audio. I am not sure if I am getting the the same audio as a DVD would have, or am I still getting somewhere in-between DVD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

I am not going to run out and buy a new player(eventually this player will get moved to my bedroom), but I am curious.

There is lots of info about the DTS core but most of it is a few years old now and I have not been able to sort it out.

While I wouldn't pretend to be an expert on DTS, this Wikipedia entry seems to discuss what your player is probably doing with DTS-HE/MA streams:


My emphasis, for the relevant bits.

Chris is bound to chime in on this one.

FYI, The DTS Audio Codec White Paper on this describes each as follows:

DTS MA -- Variable Bit Rate
Up to 7.1 channels at 96Khz
5.1 channels at 192 KHz

DTS HD -- Constant Bit rate @ 2.0 - 6.0 MBPS
Up to 7.1 channels @ 96KHz

BOTH contain backward compatible DTS Digital Surround core.

You didn't indicate what you have your player connected to and if it is a relatively current AVR/Pre-Pro, what is showing on its front panel when you play a BD?

What does it all mean anyway? Given the way Blu-Ray disc movies are recorded today(Up to 7.1 channels @ 48KHZ), there would be no audible difference between the two so I really wouldn't worry about it.

I have a new Pioneer Elite SC55 hooked up with HDMI. When I watch a Dolby Tru HD the Pioneer says Tru HD. When I watch a DVD it will say Dolby Digital. When I watch a DTS HD Master Audio, it says DTS.

Yeah, if you're player isn't pulling the extended data of the Master Audio from the track, you're only getting the 1.5 Mbps basic DTS.

That may be slightly better than DVD, even though the original DVD spec called for 1.5 Mbps DTS, most content producers didn't want to give up that much of the 10 Mbps total mux rate (which is used by additional languages and subtitles, even when they're off), so DTS made a reduced rate 768 Mbps version of the format. That is what is usually used on DVDs that have a DTS track. But the Master Audio track contains a full 1.5 Mbps core on BDs. That's still a far cry from lossless though.

Just wondering, I can't see where you mentioned the brand of your Blu-Ray player. I can recall some brands of first generation players requiring firmware updates to achieve all of the surround sound formats BUT, I must admit the idea of not having DTS MA decoding capability in the player while still having DTS HD, to me, is quite odd. Does it say just DTS on the front panel of the player as well?

DTS HD uses the base 5.1 DTS format, and packs the extra data as an extension (more channels, higher sampling rate, etc). The base DTS has to be decoded, and then the HD extensions applied to improve the quality. Where as with Master Audio, the base DTS is there, but it can be ignored and the lossless portion of the data gets decoded.

The original HD extension was messy, but followed in the tradition of all previous DTS extensions (6.1 and 96/24 were both available on DVDs, and would be bitstreamed without any updates to the player needed). So an up-to-date DTS decoder could easily pull the extended fields out and work with them. The Master Audio data is packed differently, and will be ignored by a decoder that isn't specifically aware of it.

By the way, Dolby Tru HD is actually just a tweak of MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) that was used on DVD-Audio discs (and to send digital data to Meridian speakers before that). So a reference decoder was available before BD players went into production. DTS took a little longer to get their code for DTS HD MA to everyone. Even the first HDMI chips can't bitstream lossless DTS. Luckily the PS3 had enough CPU power available to be able to decode MA into PCM and send that out the older chip to the receiver.

I have a Sony BDP-S500. When I bought it I saw DTS-HD and thought I was all set. Owners were pleading for a firmware update for years but it never came.

It probably couldn't be fixed in firmware anyway, not enough power to decode DTS-HD MA in the player, and an old HDMI chip that can't bitstream it to a receiver.

I knew I wasn't getting the Master Audio, but I thought I was getting DTS-HD. I am a little bummed out that I fell through the cracks.
Oh well. DTS movies still sound really good, and someday I will get a new player.

You can probably get DTS-HD from the few titles that had it, but as you said, it's been phased out, so you only get the base DTS from MA discs.

Do you think setting the default output of the player to PCM would do anything?

And I am not sure if I would get the DTS-HD because the receiver doesn't support it. I am going to find a title just to see what happens.

If you output PCM then the receiver doesn't need to know what format the audio started in. The question is if the player can decode DTS-HD MA to PCM.

I actually prefer for the player to decode to PCM, I think it's the right thing to do. The TV doesn't know anything about MPEG/AVC/VC1, it just wants video frames. Why should the receiver have to know about DD/DTS/AAC? Just send audio samples.

I feel really dumb. I did a little experimenting. I found a Blu Ray with a DTS-HD High Resolution track and sure enough my receiver displayed it. I always thought that the core was a subset of DTS-HD High Resolution and DTS-HD High Resolution was a subset of DTS-HD Master Audio. No. My BDP can only play DTS from a DTS-HD Master Audio disc.

Everything Club Neon said was true.

He is a smart guy for sure.

It's even more scary to know that I didn't look any of that up, it was all bouncing around in my head from when I read a PDF describing the packet format of a DTS bitsteam several years ago.