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Topic: Difference Between DTS-6 and DTS-6D?

Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001

posted 03-04-2013 11:57 AM

What is the difference between a DTS-6 and a DTS-6D?

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Dave Macaulay
Film God

Posts: 2321
From: Toronto, Canada
Registered: Apr 2001

posted 03-04-2013 12:13 PM

The DTS-6 is older and has two CD drives, originally "caddy" drives where you put the CD in a removable and easily lost/broken "caddy" thing to put it in the unit. By now these will almost certainly have been replaced with drawer drives after the original ones failed. You can add a third drive (necessary for 2-disc features plus a trailer disc) but it is rather kludgy since the third drive will not be inside the DTS-6 case.
The DTS-6D is newer and has three drive bays, I think they all came with drawer drives but early ones may have had caddies.

There have been a few updates to these units, if you get a really old one it may need a circuit board and/or ROM chip replacement to work with newer drives when the old ones fail.

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Marco Giustini
Film God

Posts: 2713
From: Reading, UK
Registered: Nov 2007

posted 03-04-2013 12:26 PM

One that comes to my mind is the better crossover on surround channels. Subwoofer channel is mixed into surrounds during encoding. It's then extracted during decoding, leaving your surrounds band-limited 80-20k. The 6D uses a better crossover.

That said, for the average use they're identical.

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Aaron Garman
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1470
From: Toledo, OH USA
Registered: Mar 2003

posted 03-04-2013 01:29 PM

I've also read that the DA converter in the DTS-6 was better than the 6D.

AJG

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Monte L Fullmer
Film God

Posts: 8367
From: Nampa, Idaho, USA
Registered: Nov 2004

posted 03-04-2013 03:08 PM

6D player units had more memory and had faster 16 spin trays along with the usage of the third tray for the new trailer disc that DTS was issuing out-along with some features that went over 3hrs long that came with three discs. And it used the 486x25 processor were the 6 had the 386sx25 processor.

Both units were upgradeable to the v.1.46 - the last version available.

Still, very hardy units.

Then, things went to pot when DTS issued out the 6AD units - a complete redesign to include a self contained processor and a cheap version of Dolby SR...along with discontinuing the i386 based processing to a Motorola chip based processing.

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Scott Norwood
Film God

Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99

posted 03-04-2013 04:03 PM

The interface by which the processors connect to an existing cinema processor changed as well. The 6D interface boards for (say) the CP65 are current items, whereas the DTS6 requires an oddball cable.

You could make whatever cable is necessary, of course, but 6D may be a better pick if you value your time.

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Marco Giustini
Film God

Posts: 2713
From: Reading, UK
Registered: Nov 2007

posted 03-05-2013 11:06 AM

And the 6D is still supported if not mistaken? Not that there is much to be supported these days though!

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Tony Bandiera Jr
Film God

Posts: 3067
From: Moreland Idaho
Registered: Apr 2004

posted 03-05-2013 12:47 PM

quote:
And the 6D is still supported if not mistaken? Not that there is much to be supported these days though!

Yes and no. DataSat no longer supports the 6, 6D, 6AD or (I think) XD10/20 directly. They still have some of the interface cards but actual support of the units themselves is done by an outside vendor.

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Steve Guttag
We forgot the crackers Gromit!!!

Posts: 12814
From: Annapolis, MD
Registered: Dec 1999

posted 03-05-2013 03:25 PM

The XD10 is no longer supported (directly) by Datasat.

The DTS-6 had really nice Jensen transformers in it. As I recall, the DTS-6 had a signal level issue where it would run out of headroom on some signals. Other than that...it was a fine piece.

At this stage, the 6D isn't really much more supported than the 6. As others have noted, the processor interface boards are different between the two since the 6 was built to work as a DTS-S (stereo) or a DTS-6 (6-track). So they had to ensure that if you only had the Stereo version with the board with just 2 decoders, that a suitable connector and signal path existed. With the 6D, all of that was gone and it was only a 6-track system so they could consolidate the signal path and put more of it inside the unit.

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Louis Bornwasser
Film God

Posts: 4441
From: prospect ky usa
Registered: Mar 2005

posted 03-05-2013 08:19 PM

Quality Presentations, Massapeuqa NY still supports both. I have only seen the 6 track units; don't think there are hardly any 2 track units. louis

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