New Processors passing HD Sound?

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.

First, the report was by Wes Phillips. Barry Willis is no longer affiliated with Stereophile.

Second, the lossless version of dts is dtsHD-MA. The MA stands for master audio and is lossless. dtsHD (no MA) is less lossy than regular dts but not truly lossless.

Kal

Great info , I am learning !

Given that there appears to be a new Betamax/VHS war ie.
Bluray/HD-DVD , does one or more of these new HD audios get associated with a particular video type or are they universal ?

How many of the newer DVD's out today are produced in one of these new formats , both video and audio ? Does one of each type seem to be dominant ?

Thank you .

Bluray/HD-DVD , does one or more of these new HD audios get associated with a particular video type or are they universal ?

Both support Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD lossless. They each have different requirements on how the players handle them though - correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Blu-Ray titles are required to have Dolby Digital soundtracks, whereas HD-DVD players are required to transcode supported codecs to Dolby Digital if necessary.

That's all off the top of my head, though - I could be getting the details wrong.

How many of the newer DVD's out today are produced in one of these new formats , both video and audio ? Does one of each type seem to be dominant ?

The vast minority. Most Blu-Ray and HD-DVDs only have a standard Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus soundtrack. I'd ballpark that less than 10% of titles support lossless. Even fewer support 7.1.

11-30-07: Kr4
First, the report was by Wes Phillips. Barry Willis is no longer affiliated with Stereophile.

Second, the lossless version of dts is dtsHD-MA. The MA stands for master audio and is lossless. dtsHD (no MA) is less lossy than regular dts but not truly lossless.

Aah, Wes Philips. That's who I meant, but I get those names confused these days. And thanks for clarifying which surround schemes are lossless.

What I found interesting in Philips' report, though, was that for all the high-buck surround separates he's no doubt heard thru the years, the uncompressed surround scheme playing into an A/V receiver was the best-sounding surround he'd ever heard.

This matches my experience. Back in the Dolby ProLogic days, conventional wisdom gave short shrift to the bandwidth and dynamic range of the surround speakers. In my current 7.1 digital setup, I've found that anything I do to improve the surround channels such as better speaker cable, higher quality interconnects, and better amplification has resulted in remarkable improvement to the overall surround field.

I'm going to have to be patient awhile before I can have uncompressed surround in my rig, however.