DTS shows...

[spacejam1]

Wondering if dts shows are allowed in the Den. Amdig over at etree has been putting out a few and they sound friggin awesome. I blow my neighbors away with them! I know it takes a shitload of work but it is well worth it. If ya like the Dead he's done a few. Has also done Pearl Jam, Phil and friends and Dave matthews and friends. Check them out some time!

[Billster]

Maybe I'm just old, but I don't even know what "dts shows" are...

[U2Lynne]

Originally Posted by Billster

Maybe I'm just old, but I don't even know what "dts shows" are...

Me either, Bill.

[Five]

what's dts?

DTS is lossy compression.

as New Homebrew said, DTS is lossy compression. it's akin (but NOT the same thing) as a 5.1 surround sound AC3 encoding. again, it's a different compression scheme involved (still lossy), with surround sound.

haven't you people ever looked at the Audio setup/options on official Hollywood DVDs? many of them will have 2 versions of AC3 audio (2.0/Stereo and 5.1/surround) along with a DTS surround track. i'm not trying to be mean, at all. i figured most people had some idea of the DTS format.

for more info, check out...

http://www.dtsonline.com/entertainment/surround/

[U2Lynne]

Originally Posted by h_vargas

haven't you people ever looked at the Audio setup/options on official Hollywood DVDs? many of them will have 2 versions of AC3 audio (2.0/Stereo and 5.1/surround) along with a DTS surround track. i'm not trying to be mean, at all. i figured most people had some idea of the DTS format.

Nope, I don't look at the audio options ever. I only have two speakers hooked up to the TV, no reason to look at them really.

[Five]

I guess I'm behind the times. I did some reading. Right now, dts would be okay on a video DVD, but is not allowed to be seeded here as audio alone.

What does everybody think of this? Should we consider allowing dts audio shows?

[4candles]

Originally Posted by Five

I guess I'm behind the times. I did some reading. Right now, dts would be okay on a video DVD, but is not allowed to be seeded here as audio alone.

What does everybody think of this? Should we consider allowing dts audio shows?

DTS is lossy and it is also very proprietory - I think I'm right in saying that DTS Inc. are quite aggressive in enforcing it's software patents, even in countries where software patents aren't (yet) allowed. For example, the VideoLan project were threatened and have removed DTS support from VLC:

http://kwiki.ffii.org/?Videolan0411En

One (the only?) lossless alternative to DTS is DVD-Audio. FLAC files can also contain up to 8 channels of audio, but I'm not sure what (if any) software can play back (or even create) multi-channel FLAC files.

My Open Source DVD-Audio authoring software will soon be able to support authoring of multi-channel DVD-Audio discs from FLAC (or WAV) input files. Currently, it only supports mono and stereo audio.

So a potential standard for lossless multi-channel audio could be to torrent the files as multi-channel FLAC files, and then the downloader would author a DVD-Audio disc using my (cross-platform) authoring program directly from those FLAC files.

Dave.

Originally Posted by Five

What does everybody think of this? Should we consider allowing dts audio shows?

a) It sux fat wang, b) I sure hope not.

It's bad enough to see people using this shit to create an "awesome surround 5.1 expererience" from a mono or stereo source on a video DVD, and audio only would just be worse. There aren't many shows that exist that can be legitimately converted into multi-channel format, and in those cases, it would be possible to use PCM for all the channels. I think the proliferation of these DTS projects capitalizes on the lack of format knowledge in the general public (see above) and the misguided belief that more tinkering makes a better show.

good points, New Homebrew.

there was a discussion about DTS vs. DVD-Video (with PCM tracks for all surround channels) on DATheads a little while ago. as i recall, one or two people said they preferred the uncompressed PCM surround version, and one or two people said they preferred the DTS version... i forget the claims pro-DTS in those messages, but i think the creator of those Dead shows in DTS/surround basically decided he'd stick with DTS since it would fit onto CDRs.

also, as New Homebrew pointed out, there aren't that many sources that can be "legitimately" made into 'true' surround sound audio recordings... sure, there are some where two excellent audience recordings are made at a show as well as a soundboard feed (and those do have potential to make for quite good surround mixes). but for the most part, taking a stereo recording and converting it to surround doesn't really "improve" the sound quality per se. in some ways, it's like taking a stereo (2 channel) source and doing some panning here and some panning there, adding some EQ on one 'version' of the original stereo track, and then clumping them together. (i know, that wasn't a very eloquent way of putting it. but going 2.0 stereo to 5.1 surround is like upsampling audio from 16-bit to 24-bit; you aren't getting better sound quality, just increasing the file size.)


U2Lynne - you've never looked at the audio setup on an official DVD? hmmm. interesting. i guess i'm geeky in that i always tunnel through all the menus to make sure i view all of the disc's contents. you may want to do this from time to time, as i know some official DVDs are set to play the 5.1 surround audio track by default... and you might get better sound playing the 2.0 stereo audio since you don't have a surround sound system set up.

[spacejam1]

There was some converstion on etree about it being lossy but the administrators allowed it to be torrented. Etree is the strictest site I know and if its good enough for them, its good enough for me. Yes it is true to not every show is going to be dts material. Dan who torrents these at etree picks the sources very carefully and does a ton of work to get them '"just exactly perfect".(B. Weir) I have to say that they really sound wonderful. I agree that just taking a show and formatting it to dts could be a mistake. But with care it is really nice sounding. AS for the lossy compression, I have listened to it and it sounds really great! Isn't that what is important in the long run? They also don't replace the regular shn or flac show. They are an addition to my collection. If you want to check one out I'll do a B&P with someone.

[ssamadhi97]

Originally Posted by 4candles

FLAC files can also contain up to 8 channels of audio, but I'm not sure what (if any) software can play back (or even create) multi-channel FLAC files.

foobar2000. </knee-jerk>

[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by spacejam1

There was some converstion on etree about it being lossy but the administrators allowed it to be torrented. Etree is the strictest site I know and if its good enough for them, its good enough for me. Yes it is true to not every show is going to be dts material.

If you'll allow me to take the opposing view, I find that "e-tree's" Bit Torrent site (bt.etree.org) has been very lax in moderating submissions of torrented material, with the exception of keeping copyrighted and non-trade friendly artists off their tracker. I've seen non-EAC DAE gens torrented there, contrary to the original seeding guidelines. Torrents do not go through a moderation process, and the forums seem to be sparsely populated.

I'd be more convinced of the acceptability of archive status for DTS shows if they were accepted at LLAMA.

BTW, this doesn't mean that they're not interesting listening experiences, it just means that they need to be CLEARLY differentiated so as not to confuse trading circles. I'd like to see a higher quality version of these shows in circulation, and expect that within a short time, advances in data storage (blue laser or the like) will allow people to create full bandwidth multichannel archives. It might be wise to save the effort until then..

[spacejam1]

I hear you Wazoo. I do agree that they should be diffrentiated clearly to avoid "bad" trade or whatnot. You really do need the best quality aud. and sbd. to obtain a nice clear dts sound. Anything less would absolutly suck! Let me ask the group this, these torrents are torrented in shn format. How does the lossness occur may I ask. I guess it is lost when it is formatted to dts before its converted to shn??