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Personally, I can tell the difference at MY THEATRE as I know what's what, our SRD has a much more subtle feel to it and DTS is a bit harsher. Not by much, but I'm in there every day and know the system but I doubt it would be possible for me to walk into another and do the same.

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Studios and directors mix the each track differently as well. Some will pay more attention to the DTS track than the Dolby and vise-versa.

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Why? What reason is there for not creating a single 5.1 (or 6.1) mix, and making the Dolby Digital and DTS tracks from this?

Hope this isn't a dumb question.

John

I've heard Dolby Digital playback sound really good at a few theaters (the best examples I ever heard were at the deceased GCC Northpark #1 in Dallas, particularly "Crimson Tide" and "The Lion King"). However, I have to say a lot of DTS shows I saw there packed just as much oomph, if not more so. "Apollo 13" was really incredible --it felt like the rocket was taking off in the theater. Really cool.

I've also heard Dolby Digital playback that was absolutely horrible. I watched "Kiss the Girls" in a then-brand new THX theater in Wichita Falls, TX run by Carmike. The screen was newly tuned, had a new Dolby CP-500 processor, QSC amps, everything top notch. The sound quality still sucked. I come back up to Lawton, watch the same film again in a different THX auditorium using a Dolby CP-65, DTS-6 and QSC amps --noticeably better quality. Years later, I revisit the film on DVD and listen to it with a higher bitrate (448kb/s) Dolby Digital track and the film sounded good.

Some of the differences, I'm sure, have to do with different audio masters being used for the encoding process. I've been less than impressed with some DTS shows; whereas others just simply walloped with really great quality audio. "Casper" of all films goes down as having one of the most walloping balls-to-the-wall DTS mixes I have ever heard. The bass on that one was just incredible.

So having said all that, I really can't notice any difference. Sometimes if I don't know what the format is, I'll try to guess, then ask them later, and I often turn out to be wrong. In the early days of digital sound it seemed like dropouts were the best clue. DTS almost never had dropouts, even from the beginning. SR-D seems to have gotten a LOT better in that department since it first came out (why did SR-D almost always have dropouts at reel change splices in the early days? Has improved software helped mask dropouts?).

I remember the first time I found out I had just sat through a movie in SDDS (which I thought sounded excellent), but I was sure it had to be DTS or SR-D because of the SDDS harshness issue others have commented on (which turns out to be more of an EQ problem than something inherently wrong with SDDS).

In a blind A-B comparison with "normal" film sound and properly-calibrated hardware, I bet very few people could tell any difference.

I doubt if anyone could tell the difference. In fact, I think most, if not all, patrons could tell the difference between analog multi-channel and any digital format in a properly set-up theater.

Also, I fail to see what the recording of the DTS LFE in the surrounds has to do with anything since the surround speakers only reproduce frequencies far above that range. Excepting of course Special Venue point-source rear/surround speakers.

>>> Phil

CP200
SDDS DFP-2500
DTS 6-D
DA20

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