Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master HD question

I always check in the player to see if the lossless soundstrack True HD or DTS Master is actually being played. There have been a few movies such as Batman Begins and The Dark Night and maybe a few others in which the regular DD 5.1 soundtrack is default and you have to switch to the lossless each time.

There should be an option for PCM in your presets (buried in the Onkyo menus). You can choose this for straight, non 'messed with' sound from your new BD player. Or, you can choose any of the DSP's (Dolby PLII, THX whatever, etc.).

Hi John, good to see that you are still around here. I used to always read and enjoy your posts. Thank you for the reply.

In all fairness John, I recall reading results of a blind listening test or two where the listeners could tell a difference, and the nod was given to the high rez tracks.

I know that in my set up, I can tell whenever the BR disk is playing the standard sound track. When I switch over to the high res track, the difference is beyond doubt. Enough so that I can’t help but wonder what folks are smoking when they make claims to the contrary.

Now all that being said, I have numerous BR disks with downright horrible High Rez sound tracks. Just because the BR has DD-HD or DST-HD on the cover, that does not guaranty high quality audio.

Hi there!

I remember you buying a Marantz receiver capable of 1.1 HDMI passthrough. Do you still have it or upgraded? If you still have it, are you still able to get the high rez formats by letting your BD player do the decoding? It appears that you can tell the difference between the "old" and new High rez formats.

I known I can hear the difference almost immediately, but like any audio differentiation I think it takes a certain amount of "training" of the ear. I doubt most people would notice a big difference initially, but after listening to great BD lossless tracks for a while and I'm sure they would begin to notice.

I think the primary differentiator is that it takes more work/skill to mix an outstanding lossy track than to mix a great sounding lossless track. In mixing both you need to be aware of spatial positioning and depth of the track, but with lossy tracks you need to also be very aware of dynamic range, compression artifacts, etc... all the standard issues linked with lossy compression. There's simply more to get right and consequently more that can go wrong.

I've heard both great lossy and lousy lossless mixes. But, I'm willing to bet that as a percentage per track type, there are more great sounding lossless mixes than lossy ones.

Lossless audio allows the sound engineer to focus on the soundscape and ambience, and forget about the technical challenges associated with lossy compression.

All that being said, I don't know why studios don't just go LPCM everywhere? Why even bother with DTS-HD MA or TrueHD? Same end results and with the storage capacity of BD it's not like space is an issue...

I find the dynamic range to be better overall as well as the clarity in dialogue. The surrounds seem "more alive" as well but it is less noticable. The biggest thing for me is the dynamic range.

I agree completely. I believe them to be clearer, with more detail in them.

Storage capacity is only part of the issue. The bigger factor is the maximum allowed bitrate of a BD is 36 megabit/sec. A 7.1, 48 kHz, 24-bit PCM track takes over 9 Mbps by itself. Adding multiple languages would quickly use up all the available bandwidth, leaving nothing for the video or subtitle tracks. Dolby's and DTS's lossless compression can easily achieve a 25% reduction, and routinely exceed 50%.

I agree especially with speakers like Axiom, they really benefit IMO. Gun shots I find sound soooooo good especially the final gunshot blast by the bank manager in The Dark Night , little details such as the shotgun shell hitting the floor sound so clear and deatailed, it feels like you are in the bank with the Joker . The whole first part of that movie is just incredible.