Quantum of Solice and Audio HD

[Super Eagle]

I went for the blue ray version as aposed to the standard dvd.

All intro features play in dolby digital but the film brings up Dolby surround on my audio system. This does not appear to be as good as Dolby Digital. The menu does not allow you to select standard dolby digital unless you can speak another language. It only appears to carry Dolby HD on the english audio.

I have a Yamaha A5 audio unit which as served me well over the last few years and I would assume that dolby hd should sound better than standard dolby digital.

I am playing the disc through my PS3 using HDMI for the video and Optical feed for the audio.

As my system does not have dolby hd on it why does it not just play in standard dolby digital instead of Dolby surround.

[xanadu]

The PS3 decodes all the sound tracks and not your amplifier as it does not output pure bitstream audio.

What you need to do on your PS3 is untick all the PCM 2.1 audio options in the PS3 audio setup and save the settings.
This should leave you with Dolby Digital 5.1.

To get the HD Audio soundtracks you just need any AV amplifier that carrys audio over HDMI.

[Super Eagle]

Done as you have asked Xanadu. Thanks

It may be me but trailers and and main feature menu show on amplifier as Dolby Digital. When main feature plays it changes to DTS Digital Surround.

Now I may be a thicky but am I assuming that DTS Digital Surround is inferior to Dolby Digital in the way that Dolby Surround Sound was inferior to Dolby Pro Logic or should DTS Digital Surround produce better sound than just Dolby Digital.

To my ears it doesn't seem to have the same amount of sharpness especially at the beginning when tyres and engines are screeching and bullets are flying.

[mrbleu500]

DTS has a higher bandwidth, less compression than Dolby Digital and is normally superior to DD, although it can sound harsher to some ears. DTS Neo 6 is equivalent to Dolby ProLogic.

Tech tests have shown DTS encoded sound to be indistinguishable from the original source (no loss of fidelity).

[xanadu]

DTS is far superior in terms of sound quality compared to Dolby Digital due to it's increased bandwidth.

I guess it's all down to the quality of your amp and speakers as to whether in reality it sounds better.

When I replaced my old Yamaha AV 5.1 amp with current Harman Kardon True HD amp all surround modes sounded a lot better.

[Super Eagle]

Thanks everyone

Mrbleu500 I may agree with you as my friends does'nt seem to have the same opinion as me and thinks the sound reproduction is awesome.

I have a pretty good speaker system so I know it's not due to them but I have never been able to listen to music without it being played through quality speakers so I think my hearing may be a little more acute than most.

[mrbleu500]

It all depends on the original encoding, at it's full bitrate, DTS has twice the bandwidth, but due to space constraints it is hardly ever used. Dolby claim DD at it's maximum bitrate is equivalent to DTS, but again it is rarely used at full rate.

Personally if there is a choice on a disk, I prefer DTS.

[batman1]

I might be wrong here, but I think Quantum of Solace Has a DTSHD master soundtrack.

Now, if you are connected via optical, the backwards compatibilty that is built into DTSHD master, will give you an enhanced DTS track. Thats why you will find more and more disks with a DTSHD master track as opposed to a Dolby TrueHD track.

That said, if you are in the market for a new amp, then make sure it has HDMI inputs and that it can accept LPCM, most do, then it will not matter if you listen to DTSHD or Dolby TrueHD, as the tracks are virtually a bit for bit copy as what the sound engineer mixed.

hth Batman1:respect-050: