11-29-07: Saki70
Can no one describe how these HD audio's differ from non HD audio ?
Is it just pulling the same ole thing from a new type of decoding system ?
I think I read a show report by Barry Willis in S'phile of an HD DVD with Dolby TrueHD played through an Onkyo HDMI 1.3a-compliant A/V receiver. Willis said it was the best surround sound he'd ever heard.
From what I understand, it comes down to lossy compression or the lack thereof. Std. Dolby Digital has pretty severe lossy compression in the surround channels. Std. DTS also has lossy compression, but less of it and sounds noticeably better than Dolby Digital. The new HD formats, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD have NO lossy compression in any of the 7.1 channels. I personally haven't heard that yet (I have a Toshiba HD DVD player, but have to use the downconverted DTS scheme sent over the Toslink), but according to Willis it's something to behold.