Quite some time ago I gave you an overview of the audio formats found in the world of DVD-Video and took a look at the position the highly touted DTS audio format took in that world at the time. A lot has changed since and I felt it was time to take a renewed look at the market to update you on these changes.

By the time I wrote the above-mentioned article, DTS played only a minor role in the DVD market. Releases that featured DTS audio tracks were few and far-between and usually had a $5 to $10 premium price over their Dolby Digital counterparts. To make matters even worse, most of them also lacked supplements when compared to the Dolby Digital titles because of the immense storage requirements of the DTS audio format. Further, DTS-capable hardware was only sparsely available and also came at a significant premium over Dolby Digital equipment, making it unattractive, if not unaffordable, for many new DVD owners. It was easy to tell at the time that DTS was in no position to make a major impact on the market under those parameters. Well, obviously the powers in charge of DTS came to the same conclusions and decided to change the course of things.

status of these players, as an entire player generation has seen manufacturers adopt DTS audio as a common feature in their line-ups. Only the most basic and low-end players still do not support DTS audio, but this may not matter as the clientele these players cater to may not have an interest in the superiority of the audio presentation offered by the DTS audio stream. (Nevertheless, it's only a matter of time before even this tier of players supports DTS.) There are now even DVD-ROM drives in the market that are fully DTS compatible. As you certainly agree with me, this has been a rapid development and it is impressive that in just a short time DTS was able to make these changes possible.

The same rapid development has occurred on the receiver end. Receivers take the digital bitstream from the DVD player and decode it into something audible. If you are in the market to buy a new receiver for your home theater today you will be hard pressed to find one that is not DTS-capable. Although there may still be a slight premium to pay for a DTS-capable receiver, the additional cost becomes practically invisible as DTS equipment is taking up a good portion of the shelf space and is adorned with additional feature sets over comparable Dolby-Digital-only versions. It would be foolish today to buy a new receiver that is not

Starting in December, 1999, however, we saw a dramatic increase in releases offering this alternative audio format to the point that now there are over 200 DVD-Video releases featuring DTS audio tracks. More importantly still, the premium is gone as well. DVD releases containing DTS audio tracks sell at the same price as Dolby Digital versions, and above that, many of these titles now contain both a DTS and a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track side by side on the same disc, blurring the line of separation between the formats even further. Some of this year's largest titles contained both formats, and studios like Universal Home Video have developed their strategy to the point that most of their day-and-date releases feature both formats on the same disc. "What made these changes possible?" you may wonder, and the answer is fairly simple.
 

With the release of the DTS version of the Saving Private Ryan DVD in November 1999, the DTS format underwent some dramatic changes. DTS allowed for stronger compression of the audio stream. In the past, the superior quality of DTS audio presentations was attributed solely to the fact that the format did not compress the audio information as much as Dolby Digital did. Now however, DTS has changed the rules, and suddenly the storage hunger of DTS audio tracks is not the roadblock any more that it used to be. Although those DTS tracks still take up significantly more space than comparable Dolby Digital tracks, the requirements have been reined in and have now become manageable for a wide variety of DVD releases.
 

As I pointed out in my previous article about the DTS format, much of the quality of an audio presentation depends on the nature of the source material. If you desire to encode a simple 1kHz sine wave with a DTS encoder and a Dolby Digital encoder at their lowest possible bitrate, you will not be able to hear any difference. You may not even be able to scientifically measure a difference, because the signal in itself is "unchallenging." Only when the encoding process is put to a "stress test" might you be able to hear or measure differences between a previous "full-rate" audio stream and a "half-rate" stream. However, many movies never even reach that peak where they would potentially stress the encoder because of the nature of their audio material. But even if you find a release that really puts it to the test, the chances that you are able to spot and discern these places are close to zero. Despite common belief, it is not the "booms" and "bangs" that put these audio formats to the test but richly textured and layered sonic information with a wide variety of different dynamics and timbres. Trust me when I tell you that by nature, you do not find that very often in a movie. Even to discerning listeners, the differences caused by the reduction of the bitrate in the DTS stream remain inaudible.

© 1997-2001 by “DVD Review”. All rights reserved.