It took about a week for Deb to finally agree to sit still long enough to watch "War of the Worlds". I think the Cruise thing with the once-virgin actress has really affected his ratings with women (not to mention his Scientology rantings on TV talk shows).

So we got the projector warmed up, made sure the drinks and munchies were close at hand and sat back quietly long enough for the cats to strategically place themselves on each available lap.

Upon reflection, both H.G and Orson would not have liked what Steve and Tom did to their neat story. It was pretty tough to like anyone except the kid. The one exception was the sound track. It was a real workout for the system. All 2,000 watts were at full song by the time the stupid looking Tri-Pods rose from their graves and began emulsifying people.

One of the things the aliens did just before they made their entrance, stage north, was to mess with all earthly electrical systems including cars. In short, cars would not start just prior to the attack.

At one very intense audio moment, (the Tri-Pods were wailing a sound that sounded like the monophonic communication that came from the ship in "Close Encounters" along with the explosions and stomping of the Tri-Pod feet), the speakers were wailing and cars were flying and suddenly car alarms went off as the cars were flying through the air. The cats both levitated and beat feet toward the bedroom and the safety of under the bed. Deb and I looked at each other and shouted at the same time, "I thought the cars electrical systems were not working"!

I hit the audio pause and the alarm was still filling the house. Then we looked up and noticed that the glass breakage sensor in our home security system was flashing wildly.

We didn't see the cats again until the closing credits. I assured them that they didn't miss much.

 

The home theatre craze has assured I will never own a condo.

 

I am truly a fan of DTS. It appeared for a little while that they might not survive.

One of my favorite scenes (for DTS sound anyway) is the opening of the battle scene in Galdiator, when the arrows start at the back of the room and go over head, great resolution.

Brief aside if you an Eagles (music) fan their "Farewell Tour 1" DVD has an incredible DTS rendering.

 

I am another fan of DTS.

If DD and DTS are offered on a dvd, I always choose DTS.

If you are a LOTR fan, play it in DTS and listen for the flying creatures (can't remember thier names) shrieks and wing beats....I noticed quite the difference.

The processor used also makes a huge difference in what you actually here.

Which processor are you using?

 

Ours is a Rotel RSP-1066. I always look for DTS tracks, but they are kind of hard to find sometimes. The difference in sound quality (and quantity) between DTS and Dolby DIgital is palpable.

My guess is that the primary reason we don't see more DTS is restrictive contract agreements. Otherwise, production companies would be fools for not taking advantage of the the best audio reproduction available.

 

DD is inherently easier to encode (at least that is what I have been told). One significant differennce between DD 5.1 and DTS is that the surround channels in DTS are full spectrum 20-20K or something very similar, I believe that DD has a low and high cutoff, frequency range for DD, I believe is 100-10K (I used to actually know this but alas over-50 overflow has made some of the bits evaporate ) There is also a significant difference in the way the codecs handle the source, but that's already probably TMI (too much information.)

 

A lot of production houses shied away from DTS because of financial issues in their early years, that being said SDDS is probably even better, but hasn't made any inroads into the consumer market.

 

I don't believe that's true. My IB sub has hit 20 Hz and lower on some DD 5.1 movies, even so I still prefer DTS over DD in most cases. There's less data loss with DTS and it also tends to run a bit hotter (volume-wise) than DD.

 

Surround channels only. Both should perform similarly in the LCR and LFE channels. That said, I could still be wrong

Here is a quote from HiFi Writer which talks about freq rolloff from both and their propaganda.

Dolby also says that the DTS 0.1 channel rolls off the bass by a few dB at the top end of the range. DTS counters that Dolby Digital's 0.1 channel imparts a huge phase shift due to its brick-wall low pass filter. Dolby says that the half-rate DTS 'maxes out at 15kHz' (later amended to a 3dB attenuation at 15kHz) while 384kb/s Dolby goes to 18kHz and 448kHz reaches 20kHz. DTS responds that the higher level Dolby system mixes the channels above 15kHz, and the lower level one as low as 10kHz.

Here is the article:
http://www.hifi-writer.com/he/dolbydts/dolbydts.htm

This is an on-going battle with lots of specs flying around.

 

^ Most of it is moot for me since at my age I can't hear much of anything above 16kHz anyway.
I do know that with both DD and DTS my sub can hit well into the inaudible range. I can feel it rather than hear it.