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HT gets more and more complicated.

Man this sure gets complicated.

I recently upgraded from my old AVR to a new DENON 3803, and man, there are alot of formats out there.

DD 5.1
DD 5.1EX
DTS
DTS ES
DTS ES Matrix
NEO:6

for crying out loud. My last Thx cert AVR was nowhere near this complicated.

The worst part, is that the DENON 3803's instruction manual totally sucks.
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Here are some questions

1) Which is better? Dolby Digital 5.1? or DTS? Whats the difference?

2) I have a DVD audio player. Right now i have a coax digital interconnect connecting my DVD-A to the Denon, and i have set the DVD player to allow the Denon to do the decoding. Is this wrong? Will the Denon 3803 be able to properly decode the DVD-A discs, or will it decode the info as straight dvd? would it be better to use the 6 channel out from the dvd to the 6 channel input to the denon and let the panasonic DV-A7 DVD-a player do the decoding?

3) PCM is this Pulse Code Modulation?, is it a form of Time divsion multiplexing?

4) Im curious, my DVD manual says that i need to use BITSTREAM to send the data to the DENON. Then it talks about PCM down conversion where it changes the 96/24b signal to 44/18(i think). Is this degrading the sound quality? Does this actually convert it to a lower resolution signal? my DVD manual says i need to set the down conversion to YES.

5) does anyone who owns a DENON know what the AFDM option in the surround setup is? i cannot find anything in the manual about it.
slappy
lev335
220 posts
 
Hello there is some very good info above. Here is the deal Dolby Digital which is AC3 Was really the first in the new wave of Digital Home Theater And your correct there are more formats coming out but some of them do require compatable components to really take advantage of the new formats. they all can sound good depending on the way it was mixed which has alot to due with the final product.its a no brainer that DTS SOUNDS BETTER THAN DOLBY DIGITAL AND HERE IS WHY TO BE EXACT DOLBY DIGITAL RUNS AT 16 BIT TO WHERE DTS RUNS AT 20 BIT ND THE 4 BIT DIFFERENCE IS REALLY BIGGER THAN YOU WOULD THINK. You will start to notice your local movie theaters are starting to use DTS MORE AND MORE AND THEY SAID "" SOON WE WILL BE RUNNING DTS FOR ALL MOVIES"" WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT THEY ALL SOUND GREAT DEPENEING ON THE MOVIE. WHAT DO YOU USE As your refrence dvd for when you demo your home theater for people? the 2nd scene of FINAL DESTINATION 2{The high way accident} was pretty cool and also The fight scene on the plane of AIR FORCE ONE Is really nice as well . I Hope I was of some help? good luck and enjoy thats what its all about. GINO
blw
147 posts
 
Although I do nearly always prefer the DTS sound track to the DD track, it's typically not available. It may be that there are more DTS available now and increasingly in the future, but I'd say that when I go to the video store, the ratio is probably close to 100:1 in favor of DD. There are vanishingly few of titles available in the newer formats, such as Neo:6, DTS ES, DD EX, etc. It's so few that last fall when I was shopping for upgrades to my pre/pro, I simply crossed those formats off my requirements. I'm sure I'll be upgrading again, and probably more than once, before those formats are numerous enough for me to want to buy equipment to play them.
lazarus28
339 posts
 
dts neo:6 isn't a format per se - it's dts's version of prologic 2, or just an algorithm to extract multichannel from 2-channel sources.

as such, nothing will be "recorded" or "released" in neo:6

i use it on occasion, but for the most part prologic 2 does a better job on tv broadcasts and the sort. don't ever use either for music. it's not good.
jodaben4068
1 posts
 
You are not alone !!
I bought a 2803 (last years version ) and found the manual useless. I called Denon support and the people there very helpful.
AFDM is auto flag detection mode. If set on, and you play a movie that is in DD ex or DTS es, there is an embedded flag in the data. This flag is detected and the surround rear channels are automatically turned on.
tonyp54
130 posts
 
And to think I almost considered selling my Rotel to get a more "user friendly" Denon. It took me weeks to figure out how to get the OSD to work since the manual failed to mention you need to be on one of ten different remote settings or it won't work!!
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