dts Digital Entertainment

How Does DTS-HD Work?

• Encoding with Master Audio

Super-high quality video takes up a LOT of space during mastering, even on Blu-ray Discs. If possible, the content creators will encode with DTS-HD Master Audio, which is more efficient in terms of disc space and bit -stream bandwidth. In Short - the efficiency of DTS-HD Master audio allows content creators to provide higher quality video, while encoding lossless audio that is identical to the studio master.

• Secondary audio

Compared to standard DVD, Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats deliver incredible interactive features. The new high-def players come equipped with an Ethernet port, delivering a whole world of content that can be streamed or downloaded over the Net. Now, months after buying a movie or concert disc, you can receive feature updates such as directors’ commentaries, extra scenes, and additional songs.

When these new features are streamed in, your player will actually mix the audio portion of the “new” content with the audio already on the disc. The new audio is called Secondary Audio on Blu-ray Disc and can be up to 5.1 channels; on HD DVD this is called Sub Audio and can be in 2.0 channels. DTS uses a system called DTS Express to deliver Secondary or Sub Audio to your player. The DTS Express audio is mixed with the Primary Audio, giving you an intensely great interactive surround experience.

To ensure that the audio mix comes out perfectly, DTS-HD employs an innovative feature called Dynamic Mixing. When the movie or concert creators encode the Secondary or Sub audio, they include meta-data that will dynamically mix that audio with the primary audio. With Dynamic Mixing, you’ll continually have the correct sound balance — just as the producers intended.

• Speaker re-mapping

Currently, the consumer electronics industry has no “official” speaker layout for discrete 7.1 channel audio. The two most popular layouts involve placing two additional speakers in the 7.1 Standard or 7.1 Rear Surround configurations. However, movie and music creators can mix their surround audio into a number of different possible layouts (up to seven total). Some of the layouts are quite exotic (see the links to the right).

SO, what if a movie’s sound engineer mixed the audio with one type of layout, but your speaker system is set up differently? Don’t worry, you’re good. DTS-HD Master Audio and High Resolution Audio include an exclusive feature called Speaker Re-mapping. Sophisticated algorithms are used to electronically “reposition” speakers, so you get the best possible sound quality without having to physically re-arrange your speakers. All DTS-HD featured A/V receivers have the ability to re-map content mixed with up to seven different speaker layouts. All you have to do is plug in one of the two common layout types (see graph below) in your AV receiver’s setup menu, and DTS-HD Speaker Re-mapping does the rest.