DTS vs Dolby Digital: What's the Difference?

[Music] gts and dolby digital remain two of the leading formats for surround sound on modern speakers but what's the actual difference between the two is one better than the other and which is more future proof and more likely to be compatible with modern devices hi this is phil from make tech easier and this is dts vs dolby digital what's the difference [Music] just like music surround sound formats come in many standards the two most popular ones supported by a broad range of high-end audio systems are dts and dolby digital the battle of dts versus dolby sound is a hotly debated issue some audiophiles argue that dts is capable of delivering better sound quality than its counterpart dolby digital this reasoning arises probably because dts surround sound is usually encoded at a higher rate than the corresponding dolby formats others argue that dolby digital is far more advanced and so is its sound quality in its defense dolby maintains that their codec is more efficient and thus can operate at a lower bit rate so which of these two multi-channel sound formats is more superior let's find out what are dts and dolby digital dolby digital is the name for audio compression technology developed by the dolby labs dts however stands for digital theater systems a popular home theater audio format that was developed in 1993 as a competitor to dolby labs in the development of surround sound audio technology for movie production both dts and dolby digital provide surround sound codecs for 5.1 6.1 which is quite rare and 7.1 setups where the first number represents the number of small surround speakers and the one is a separate channel for a subwoofer both formats utilize perceptual data reduction techniques to remove useless data in pcm signal output thereby preserving high fidelity sound in addition to the 5.1 and 7.1 speaker playback different formats offer cutting-edge audio technology geared towards enhancing the sound quality for example dts and dolby digital use compression to save space either on the disk as is the case with blu-ray and dvds or on streaming bandwidth for services like netflix some versions of dolby digital and dts are lossy which means they have a degree of audio degradation from the original source while others are what you call lossless dolby for example has a lossless version dolby true hd and a lossy version dolby digital plus the lossy version takes up very little space on brewery discs dts also has a lossless version dts hd master audio that supports 7.1 channel speaker setups differences between dts and dolby digital the main difference between dts and dolby digital is seen in the bit rates and compression levels dolby digital compresses 5.1 channel digital audio data down to a raw bit rate of 640 kilobits per second kbps however these 640k bits per second is only available on blu-ray discs the maximum bit rates that dolby digital can support for dvd video and dvd audio is up to 448 k bits per second to squeeze in all the relevant data dolby digital employs a variable compression of around 10 or 12 to 1. dts surround sound on the other hand applies a maximum raw bit rate of up to 1.5 megabits per second however that bitrate is limited to approximately 768 kilobits per second on dvd video due to the higher bit rate supported by this format gts requires significantly lower compression of about four to one in theory the lesser compression used in the encoding the more realistic the sound becomes as it better represents the original source what this means is that dts has the potential to produce better sound quality than dolby digital here's a breakdown of the various versions you'll find in each standard and their bit rates dts dts digital surround 5.1 maximum channel sound at 1.5 mbps dts hd master audio 7.1 channel maximum sound at 24.5 mbps lossless quality gts hd high resolution 7.1 channel maximum sound at 6 mbps dolby digital dolby digital 5.1 channel maximum sound at 640 kbps common in dvds dolby digital plus 7.1 channel maximum sound at 1.7 mbps supported by streaming services like netflix dolby true hd 7.1 channel maximum sound at 18 mbps lossless quality available on blu-ray discs which one is superior comparing dts and dolby digital in consumer application reveals that both standards are closer in terms of audio performance by looking at the specs as we just have dts seems to have an edge against orbee due to the higher bitrate in all of its three versions however higher bit rates don't always mean higher quality there are other factors such as signal to noise ratio and dynamic range that some audio files might consider better in dolby rather than dts most modern receivers come with support for both dts master audio and dolby true hd so you may not even have to choose between the two but if you are an audio enthusiast and want something extremely gorgeous you might want to look into technologies such as dtsx or dolby atmos as well as receivers and home theaters that support them however in the rare occasion that you have to choose between dts and dobby sound go with dts due to the higher bitrate determining which format has superior sound quality is a very ambiguous matter as there are many factors to consider besides bitrates and compression levels so where does this dts versus dolby debate lead us both audio formats are capable of achieving nearly similar results delivering surround sound okay as always thank you so much for watching that's all for now see you next time

Channel: Make Tech Easier

Views: 71,782

Keywords: tech tips, mte, maketecheasier, dts, dolby digital, dts vs dolby digital, dolby digital vs dts, dts vs dolby digital test, is dts better than dolby digital, is dts x better than dolby atmos, is dolby digital better than dts, what is dolby digital, what is dts, DTS vs Dolby, Dolby Digital vs DTS, dolby digital vs dts digital surround

Id: HO2nbDGGNFw

Length: 6min 10sec (370 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020