DTS audio music (5.1 channel) is better or CD Audio (Stereo Audio) music?

Dear MM, a lot of non-facts in that post. Don't know whether you read something wrong or interpreted something incorrectly. But you do seem to understand a few principals incorrectly. Whatever the case, I'll post in a detailed post later.

Well, my intention is not to hold you back from voicing your opinion, but yes, you got a few basics wrong and someone should tell you where.

Hmm Okay.I can be wrong.And I am not against MC.
waiting for more Knowledge !..............
Ranjeet ,Please give me more info what basics are wrong.

**I am not commerical member!.So don't have access to all the h-fi systems . just a enthusiast

Note Quoted text in magenta


"SACDs and DVD-Audios ! The dynamics improvement because the SACD can use high bitrate audio which naturally allows for more headroom.A normal CD is also limited to a certain frequency range that corresponds to the frequencies we humans can actually hear.
In SACD frequency range over 20khz.Why we need this ?, especially when most humans can barely hear anything up to 18khz... some says that since real instruments produce frequencies well over 20khz, this would be more true to the source and also humans could percept those frequencies, just not hear them (much like very low bass, which is another story).
This doesn't really make any sense to me."


The human ear cannot hear beyond 20 Khz anyway, but the fundamental frequencies and their harmonics give instruments their sound or timbre. Ex Piano at 330 hz will have harmonics ranging upto more than 3khz. That is also the reason why LP even with their limited frequency response sound very good to the ear. (Note- Not from technical perspective of dynamic range etc)




Mostof the CD's today do not even extend to the limitation of the media. Modern recordings are shitty and don't even need the CD quality and additional dynamic headroom because, well, they're compressed to anyways.


Absolutely true but put in a chesky or a telarc CD who push those 16 bits to the max and then you will realize what a humble CD can do. Abuse is different from capability is my point.

Technically, SACDs and DVD-As use 24bit/96khz. Imagine the 96khz to be the resolution of the signal. By theory, you need double the amount khz of the signal to reproduce. let's say your music can go up to 20khz in frequency. You would need at least 40khz resolution to reproduce the tone properly. The CD has a resolution of 44.1khz and this is sufficient.

Quite true the Nyquist theorem which you quoted says the same thing, but the slope at which you cut off your top end also does matter. Cutting off you upper end at 48 khz with a sampling of 96khz helps your recordings present the harmonics in the 10-20khz region better which extend all the way upto 40-50 Khz. Many vinyl players also deliver these kind of higher harmonics.

24bit defines the dynamic range or just the amount of free headroom that is available to a signal. Everything is recorded to 24 bit today. So this is one advantage over the CD, which is 16bit because the "downsampling" to 16bit might have influence on the sound. This is not in any way proven and should not be substantial. But, technically, it is possible to record something that actually uses the whole 16bit of dynamics of the CD.


Very true when truncated down from 24 bits you don't lose any bits in processing digital. Contrary to what people think there is a bit generation loss in digital as well, but it is very small. Therefore working at 24 bit gives you the extra precision needed to handle 16 bits perfectly. I have worked on sonic solutions workstations which handle 24 bit audio capture with 48 bit internal processing. This ensures that the audio signal remains completely transparent even after multiple operations of equalizer adjustments and editing using the software and hardware.



In fact, when recording this happens a lot. Then again, once recorded the signal is predictable and can fit easily on a CD. Let's just say the difference is marginal.

24 bit vs 16 bit is a huge difference ONLY in the right system which can exploit 24 bits fully, how many home audio systems can play with dynamic range of 120 db which 24 bit recordings give out?

Except in mixing studios and very high end home theaters, it is very difficult to realize the full potential of 24 bit decoded signal . But i am not denying that 24 bit will sound better even in a home system, but the difference will not be night and day between 16 and 24 bits due to the resolving power of the equipment lower in the chain like DAC, amplifiers, speakers and room acoustics.

I love that, and just a soul that think Feel the bass experience, takes to a different tier

Further reading on Infrasonics here, one paragraph says

Sarah Angliss, an engineer and composer in charge of the project, added: "Organ players have been adding infrasound to the mix for 500 years so maybe we're not the first generation to be 'addicted to bass'."

hi guys,

nice to see so many inputs on this debate for everybody to increase their knowledge.

just to add my little bit on the article link put up by sunil.... what i have learnt about feedback, sound processing, etc from my guitarist friends.

correct me if i am incorrect anywhere.

an object has a natural frequency of the elasticity in it. range of elasticity is due to the material (steel is elastic - remember school physics) or the shape of the object (eg spring) or the conditions in which it is there (pendulum hung or a cymbal suspended from a stand).

if force thru sound vibrations is given to the object at a frequency matching its natural frequency, the object starts moving / vibrating. object will absorb maximum energy of force and release the energy thru its own movements / vibrations when the sound vibrations are at exactly matching frequency. at freq higher than the natural freq, the object will not be able to absorb the energy and will break (glass shattering due to low bass).

our body has of muscles, tissues, viens, glands... all of which are elastic and have a natural frequency. the extremely low bass frequencies produced by the instruments in church would be matching the frequencies of some of the muscles... say that of stomach. so people would not hear the sound, but would feel the vibrations of the sound at the stomach and get uneasy feeling... which they attribute to spiritual experience.

linking my previous post to the topic of this thread, if SACD / HD / DTS audio recorded to reproduce at 24 bit can actually reproduce non-hearable sound frequencies between 10-20k, then it really should be interesting to "feel" that sound. assuming that the really high-end speakers which can reproduce that from the SACD is available, how will that sound with feel be different if it is from stereo or multi-channel? and more importantly will that feel necessarily add positive effect in your overall listening pleasure? expert comments please.

also can anyone tell me frm where can i download any SACD / DTS audio. also where is such equipment available for audition? don't know much about this.

Back in 1978 Muraoka, Yamada and Yamazaki (JAES 26) ran some experiments. Equipped with speakers capable of rendering 40Khz, music with high frequency components of well over 30K (including moog synthesizer tweedling and cymbals crashing) plus trained audio professionals. They ran music without filtering and with filters at 14, 16 , 18 and 20K. Not one person could tell the difference when the filter was at 20K to a standard 0.05 significance level, none could manage it at 18K or 16K either only at 14K did the filter make the unfiltered and filtered music differentiatiable at the 0.05 level . They concluded that a 20K filter was perfectly safe but that pragmatically 15K would probably be fine too

Okay, lets hope I am not too late.

You do not know what you were missing until you get it. Hear a high bit track recorded from the original media (not upsampled) and you will realize that's not true.

Not sure what you mean. I guess recording techinques are evolving and modern recordings challenge the limits of speakers.

Or could be that, are you referring to MP3? Then you are talking at a different level altogether. And at that level that is true. But those who seek audio experience beyond iPods and MP3s, will not agree. CDs sound better than MP3s and then again, higher bit rate media sound better than CDs.

Absolutely wrong. Resolution is not related to frequency response in that way. 96KHz means 96K samples per second. Doesn't matter whether the sample contains a 1k tone or a 10k tone or a 100k tone.

The dynamic range depends on bit-depth. 16 bit red book format allows for samples of roughly 32K varying intensities. 24 bit allows 128 times that precision. That smoothens out the curve resulting in a much richer sound experience than RBCD can ever produce.



So far so good.

Well, thats an evident loss of quality. Down sampling is taking place, right?

Impossible! If this was possible, then they wouldn't develop new higher definition formats. They would just perfect the art of using the 16 bits optimally.

Of course, it can be done. And in fact, it is done. And the result? A CD with a low dynamic range and clipping signals all over.


That's person dependent. To you it may be marginal. To another it may be a huge difference.

That's my opinion, for what its worth.

Ranjeet,
Since you says Nyquist Shannon sampling theorem is wrong I don't have any thing else to say.
The 'rule-of-thumb' relationship between bit depth and dynamic range is, for each 1-bit increase in bit depth, the dynamic range will increase by 6 dB (see Signal-to-noise ratio#Fixed point). 24-bit digital audio has a theoretical maximum dynamic range of 144 dB, compared to 96 dB for 16 bit; however, current digital audio converter technology is limited to dynamic ranges of ~115 dB because of 'real world' limitations in integrated circuit design.
How may Hi-Fi can produce 96db and more !

If you thought I am talking about MP3 it is the usal wrong assumption and ignorance you are showing.We have heard SACD and hence telling.I don't know which system you owns and may be that is getting best out of your SACD.

Most of hi-fi owner don't have previlage of owning Very high end system.Any of the forum member can decide after hearing the difference.
I told what I know and what most of the people in world accepts for VFM.

An article published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society Vol. 55 Number 9, September 2007, entitled "Audibility of a CD-Standard ADA Loop Inserted Into High-Resolution Audio Playback" by E. Brad Meyer and David Moran reported the results of their study, which concluded that listeners could not hear the difference between a high-resolution two-channel recording and a CD-quality downsampling of the same recording except when "unpleasantly (often unbearably) loud." The article concluded that many high-resolution releases sounded better than their CD counterparts, but attributes this to mastering differences.(source :Super Audio CD - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

-Peace(sorry for being rude,but some times you have to )

What one likes is very personal. I love the feel of music enveloping around, even if it is the "lossy" mp3.

Entry level is getting redefined, witness the Marantz SR-4002 !