I was a 35mm projectionist towards the end of the 35mm era. We had two auditoriums each with a dts 6D processor retrofitted onto 1960's projectors, and 5 that just used the analog audio strip on 35mm. The difference was unreal. The film reels usually came shipped from the studio with the matching dts audio disc(s) tossed in the box in a paper sleeve. Pretty neat system, the dts used a light sensor to sync the disk playback with the film's timecode track. Since advertisments usually weren't dts encoded, the system would use the analog audio from the film strip until the first timecode mark, and automatically swich to digital audio. The dts 6d would make a cool video, but they're large and heavy. It had 3 disc drives, and a dot-matrix lcd for , channel levels, preamp settings, per-channel equalizers, timing & sync etc. Pretty advanced for 90's tech
@ maybe even a tour of a 35mm projection booth. There are still a bunch left in the UK. The mix of analog and digital would make an awesome special episode
@@bobbym6130I agree, but that would mean for Techmoan to make the most complex episodes that have potentially the smallest amont of interested viewers. Spmehow I think he won't.
We had DTS in the Cinema, in which i worked 2005-2010. I still remember, after I had inserted the celluloid film, I also had to insert two CDs into a strange player. Once there was an lion related error in the system that I will never forget. The movie was a James Bond flick that started with the typical MGM lion roar. The first half of the movie played normally. Then came a scene in which James Bond was sneaking through a corridor... Suddenly a lion roared! And James didn't even react to it! The whole audience looked around in confusion. Well... What had happened? Turnes out, sound didn't change from CD1 to CD2, but repeated CD1. 😁
@@TomSwartz Fun fact, I'm in the background of the airport scene from Quantum of Solace, but digitally edited out and replaced with mountains ... It wasn't really filmed in Austria :)
Matt - (aside from wearing cool shirts all the time) thanks for making the best retro-tech videos on UA-cam! You do such an amazing job and I doubt you get the recognition you deserve or the $$ you deserve. You bring interesting retro consumer AV equipment equipment to a platform where a broad audience can appreciate tech history and clever designs. And you realistically tackle repairs of old equipment, showing all the ups and downs and inspiring the rest of us to attempt such things. You exhibit a quiet competence that every immediately recognizes and makes you a credible source of information. All the best! And you should start a Techmoan branded line of shirts. I’d buy some, like the one you are wearing in this episode.
With 1,400,000 Subscribers and 4,000 paying members and hundreds of millions of views I don't think you need worry about Matts recognition or $$ because he certainly wont be.
What's sad is that- despite the datedly small (by modern standards) and grey TV- that setup with its late 80s aesthetic still looks *way* cooler and more desirable than anything modern to me. Yes, I was an 80s kid, why do you ask? (For the TV's sake, I hope those speakers are magnetically shielded, though.)
In the early 2000s the Pink Floyd RoIO/bootleg scene you couild download the quad versions of Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here as a DTS CD. A lot cheaper than buying a vintage quad system. They sounded great (AHEM - so I'm told) via my AV receiver. Great vid boss!
Sadly, most were up mixed to 5.1. There was however a genuine DVD "extracted" version existed too. The best version is from 2023. There's a 5.1 Surround Mix encoded in dts-HD MA / Dolby Atmos / DD+ / 24bit 96kHz uncompressed version. It's totally remastered. The Dark Side Of The Moon - 50th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set, however cost about £300 though.
okay that’s all well and good but once i’ve tracked down all the hardware, i’ve now got to track down some gentleman in the city to sell me the requisite recreational materials to enjoy it
I had a handful of DTS audio discs. They were an interesting novelty. Pro tip, the tracks can be ripped to FLAC and streamed on a network. The decoder will still process the audio.
The craziest time period was in the early 2000s when movies were still being released to theaters with those DTS audio track CDs despite the encryption on them having been cracked for years. Every bootleg movie had immaculate audio for a time lol
Nearly all bootlegging and pirate circles involve people inside the industry. Be that people in the mastering house or the theatre. You can still get good audio by plugging directly into the audio rack with a cable to a recording device or over the hearing impaired broadcast. On torrent sites they'll be listed as telesync or TS.
my memory is that movie pirate group Centropy was the first to crack the dts discs, and an SVCD of The Matrix was their first release with it. It was a very big deal at the time.
I had an audiophile room mate back in the 1990s and I remember him raving about DTS but don't recall ever seeing this format, it seems to me that surround sound on audio only just never seem to take off except for a small handful of very dedicated enthusiasts. He sold me a Dolby Pro Logic amp that I loved, and he of course had Dolby Digital that sounded just amazing. Miss that guy, he would have loved your channel but unfortunately passed away a few years ago.
I have a now ancient RCA 5.1 system that has DTS and Pro Logic and I love that even when playing records (through an amp and then into the “tape” input) I get the pseudo surround sound of pro logic.
Funniest audiophile story I've had was when a bandmate was showing off a hi-fi system worth ~$10k in 2000 dollars, and we spent all night listening to Ween! 🤣
I had a second hand super luxury Volvo V70 Summum years ago, leather and heated everything - with a surround sound system including DTS CD! Pink Floyd sounded amazing circling around the car!
Oh I remember that radio, the premium one with the center speaker on the dash. I worked at a used Volvo dealer at the time, I never had a CD to demonstrate the radio. A few years after that I worked at an Acura dealer and their premium stereos could do DVD audio. We had a demo disk for those cars since it was a new car dealer.
Listening to 5.1 music is amazing if you have a great amp and drivers. There are some luxury cars that have stereos that have the decoder and separation in the cabin's speakers. It really adds a very nice spatial dimension to music besides stereo.
I agree. I have an old Lexus LS460 with a Mark Levinson system that plays DTS and SACD, DVD-A, it is one of the best places to listen to music. The cabin was apparently 'tuned' to optimise music play back. Sounds great with good source material.
I watched Jurassic Park in 1993 with DTS sound here in central america, it sounded awesome, so much so that because of it, I always pursue movies under the DTS format, I think is way better than Dolby digital and it should be, since it has a double the bitrate. I have watched a couple of movies in recent years and even though the theaters have atmos configs and you can hear stuff above you, it doesnt sound as sharp as nor as lively as, with DTS. At home I have a dts capable soundbar and a 5.1 pc setup and when I play a dts movie vs truehd (or simple atmos), which is the equivalent to dts-hd in bitrate terms, simple dts is still king and you can hear the difference. The Dark Knight was awesome in the theater, by then, one can assume that was DTS-HD. I think most people are deaf and cant hear the difference, which is why lesser formats like atmos are winning, sad indeed.
Perfect timing for this video. I've been ripping all sorts of 5.1, 7.1 etc albums to SSD to listen to in my 2025 Explorer. Sounds absolutely incredible.
I have a 2008 Acura MDX with the ELS surround system. It’s fantastic. I’ve had several cars I’ve installed discrete 5.1 systems in with PC-based carputers loaded with 5.1 music as well. The car is an amazing showcase for surround music.
Quadraphonic was a big deal when I was a kid in the 70s, my uncle had it in his car, my folks had quad in the living room. Quad 8-tracks were awesome to listen to.
They were out there. It was neat how they worked. It seemed that the recording use two tracks for one side, both front and rear. Then the other 2 tracks for the other side, front and rear. Then the actual piece of tape was twice as long to hold the whole recording.
@@paul5683 Yes, the quad 8 track tapes only had program A and B. I think there was a notch in the cartridge that told the player to only do 2 instead of the normal 4 programs. Come to think of it, I remember my uncle complaining that the quad 8 tracks were a bit more prone to failure, so I guess more tape crammed into the cartridge may have hurt longevity. I vaguely remember some quad 8 tracks coming as 2 tape sets.
A name you'll see over and over again on these discs is Brad Miller. Brad was a big proponent of Quadraphonic sound in the 70's and put out a number of ambient sound albums (like trains, thunderstorms, etc) on his own Soundbird record label, then moving into the "Mystic Moods" albums distributed by Warner Brothers. He even participated in a number of Quadraphonic-FM radio experiments. There is an anecdote that in the 90's when he and a group of others came up with DTS, it was originally to be a 4.0 (Quad) speaker setup. When this idea was pitched to the record labels, they balked fearing they didn't want to go through another Quad debacle.... Brad, thinking on his feet came up with the idea of 5.1 on the spot claiming it's better than Quad! This was enough to sell the record executives - the idea of a center speaker and a subwoofer. The joke was on them as many of those initial DTS Discs are nothing more than the original Quadraphonic master tape with a phony or "derived" center and subwoofer channel. Suffice to say though, the BTO, Steve Miller, Paul McCartney, Ohio Players and Eric Clapton titles are all simply the original Quadraphonic Masters put to a DTS CD. There are those in the Quad Community who feel a lot of the reason that Mobile Fidelity / DTS / HDS abandoned the idea around the turn of the century was that Brad Miller passed away in 1998. Myself, I've been HUGE into Quad for almost 30 years now. Sure, I missed the initial push in the 70's.... but I've been collecting Quad 8-tracks and Quad LP's for most of my life and have amassed an impressive collection plus, a fully-functional vintage Quad playback system. I have over 600 Quad 8-tracks and in the neighborhood of 100 CD-4 LPs and yes, a small selection of these commercial DTS discs as well as several hundred home-brew DTS discs containing vintage Quadraphonic albums on them. In the days when pretty much every record label eschewed the idea of surround sound, there were those of us who took it upon ourselves to maintain and preserve many of the Quad albums by converting them into the digital domain. In my case, I also had a 4.0-capable stereo system in my daily driver automobile so I could listen to Quad/Surround on the road. Today, we're enjoying a bit of a resurgence in Surround sound or Quad in that a few years back, an outfit called "Audio Fidelity" put out a number of vintage Quad albums on SACD, and today; a company in the UK called Dutton-Vocalion is also re-releasing a plethora of vintage Quad albums on SACD. They have done well over 100 titles to date. Even jumping back on the wagon after a bit of a false start is Rhino Handmade here in the states that are re-releasing Quadraphonic content on Blu-Ray discs including some vintage unreleased albums! It's a very groovy time to be into Quad.
I was Brad's business partner. He and i owned the Millennium which we issued to give the consumer a inexpensive way to listen to these discs. We did not want to issue the quad discs in 5.1, we were forced to, by DTS Entertainment as a way to keep things the same as new discs were going to come in 5.1. We sat in my basement listening to quad 8 tracks, and i gave him a list of titles we should attempt to get from Sony. We entered Sony thru the backdoor, special marketing. Things were coming to and end as many companies were starting to enter the market, but we knew DTS entertainent was going away soon. Brad got cancer and that was the final straw in the drink. His wife actually had the Johnny Mathis title released after his departure, as we still had the contract with Sony and she was a fan.
Also Pentatone label released a lot of SACDS in 4.0 from the Philips and Deutsche Grammophon classical recordings of the 70s that where recorded for quadaphonic but in the 70s where only released in stereo because of the limitations of decoding from vinyl LPs. But sadly the EMI quadraphonic SQ encoded LPs where never sytematically re-released in a modern (discrete) surround format. I use an Surround Master from Involve Audio to decode them (supports both QS and SQ decoding).
I have a couple of surround sound physical discs and they sound awesome. Love this format, dvd audio, sacd and now blu ray audio. Some of the mixes can be missed, but when it’s done right, it’s unparalleled in my opinion.
Fun fact about 16:04 with streaming services: On Apple Music, all of their Dolby Atmos mixed music can still be played on regular 5.1/7.1 surround setups, since it's just downmixing the existing Atmos track in the same way as what happens with movies on disc and streaming nowadays.
You'll be missing any actual Atmos objects the mix might contain, but yes, the base layer is just regular Dolby TrueHD, which is again backwards compatible with even older gear. The biggest problem is finding a compatible streamer, as far as I know Apple Music basically only works with an Apple TV, while Tidal requires an Nvidia Shield TV.
As I understood it, part of the Atmos decoding standard is logic to figure out how to downmix or upmix to whatever the audio system is set up for on the fly.
The 5.1 or 7.1 base layer of Atmos, whether lossless True HD on blu ray or lossy Dolby Digital+ for streaming, contains all of the sound including the Atmos objects. So if you play them in 5.1 or 7.1 you hear everything. If decoded as Atmos there is meta data which tells the decoder how to remove the relevant audio objects from the 5.1/7.1 and where to play them in the Atmos sound field.
I never cared much for surround music, but for amateur remixers like myself, DTS CDs, DVD-A, and SACDs were a great source for high-quality stems and vocal tracks for home remixing projects. Here in Buenos Aires, there's a place called Teatro Ciego (Blind Theatre) where you can listen to these surround formats with proper equipment in a completely dark room. It's a really interesting experience.
Same, never cared for surround music and never even ever saw one in real life, but I totally love 5.1 since like 2004, music sounded so crazy with upmix, sometimes using effects and for movies and games with real 5.1 was crazy, I remember like on GTA San Andreas the helicopters going all around my room 😎
I had (and still have) quite a few of these discs. I always got a kick out of listening to them. These came AFTER the DTS LaserDiscs, but not long after (source: I was there and a big DTS fan back them). They may have mastered them before LaserDisc DTS but they didn't sell them before. The home DTS tech was a drastically different CODEC than the theatrical version. In fact the company split with one of them handling all the home stuffs.
Oh man I have a million of these. I wish this would have continued as a niche for us 5.1 music nuts. These sounded absolutely fantastic! Sting had a bunch of releases. On a home theater these are hard to beat they sound so good. Such a shame they just didn't keep releasing these.
I think one of the reasons people may not have gotten into them, besides the price of a proper player, was the price of the individual cd's. I had a player and system, but found the cost of the cd's to be almost double than the standard. Also, in my case, my system wouldn't allow tonal changes, it was like they wanted you to experience it as it was recorded, and that was it. Only my two cents worth.
With SACD (Super Audio CD) and Apple Music streaming in 3D audio (Dolby atmos) you have much more music content now in surround. Also audio only Blue Ray is available.
@MatadorBaukasten I've heard all of these services surround sound and they all sound like total dog shit. I have Amazon music, love it but the Atmos music is so compressed it's a joke. They don't sound a tenth of what DTS CDs sounded like. I have heard all the services too. Compressed the shit out of it.
@@JC-bl9bo The releases on physical media like Blue Ray and SACD are HiRes uncompressed. DTS is a lossy format. With Amazon music I have no experience I only use Apple Music which offers also HiRes in Stereo or lossy Surround. But of course Loudness war is another storry.
I'm surprised Matt, "Techmoan" missed this one. The same process also applied to AC3 or Dolby Digital files. I used to hunt down on the web .ac3 files from the obscure, new age, Swedish experimental radio broadcasting e.t.c , (extracted .ac3 files from DVD's) then converted to .wav files and burnt on a CD-R as the "Red Book standard" only then as a 44,1 kHz audio, but I could play back on my 5.1 system and listen to glorious surround sound on CD.
From the mid 80's to the late 90's I had a 70's SQ Quad set-up. The beauty with SQ is you could record the stereo L & R signals from the record onto reel to reel, 8-Track, a computer or any other stereo audio recording device and play them back through the decoder to get the same rich Quad sound and seperation.
My only exposure to DTS CD was a fan-made 5.1 surround mix of the Queen II album that was "released" on DTS CD. It's quite clever how the technology works; the compressed DTS 5.1 track uses the exact same bitrate as a stereo PCM track on an audio CD, so it has no additional requirements for the CD player with regards to bandwidth or playback features. And since it's just raw bits read off of a disc, if you get those bit-for-bit to a decoder via a digital TOSlink connection, the decoder won't know or care that it originated from a CD and will happily decompress the 5.1 audio.
One of the most useful things of the DTS-CD format was the ability to make your own. This provided hobbyists that like to digitize their tapes and records a way to digitize their quad records and tapes, and also provided a way for people to share rare and out of print quad titles that were hard to find and expensive on eBay. Also, many of the DTS-CD releases, such as that Ohio Players discs you have, were actually quad mixes that had generated center and LFE channels - I recommend muting the center when playing those. Most switched over to creating dvd-a discs once software to do that came along.
I love/loved DTS. It was my introduction to 5.1 music, prior to DVD-A and SACD. I bought a few when I picked up my first DTS DVD player and 5.1 system around 2000. I still have quite a few.
I've had my (Linux) computer output encoded to dts with dcaenc and fed via TOSLINK to an AV Receiver for many, many years. Has always been great for multi-channel audio and OpenAL spatial audio in games. dts/dca is absolutely good enough, 5.1ch 48k 24bit, I know that's not what people call HD audio, but let's be honest nobody can actually hear the difference...
Best sound ever for music in 5.1 is DTS. I got into it a little late buying music DVD with DTS. The sound is amazing. Miss it so much because it made you feel like you were close to the stage where the band was playing
Yep. It reminds me of looking forward to Saturday morning cartoons as a kid in the 80s. Except now I'm a grown up (ugh) and the 'toys' are bigger, more expensive and generally obsolete!
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@@rich_edwards79 I'm just revelling in buying up stuff cheaply where I can and being a child again! Atari 2600 and ST and a Matchbox 'Monza' Powertrack to play with!😂
I love 5.1 music! I got a SACD demo disc from a Rolling Stone magazine when I was in high school. And it worked on my fat PS3 with 5.1 dvd home theater system. So I then got Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral and With Teeth on DualDisc. Both are amazing in surround sound. I buy 1 or 2 DVD-Audio/Bluray Audio a year mostly of old stuff. My latest was David Bowie Ziggy Stardust. But mainly I listen to Dolby Atmos on Apple music with my 5.1.2 system. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and Pink Floyd DSOTM and The Beatles sound amazing in Atmos and a lot of newer music is released in the format too.
I've been an avid collector of surround music since they came out in the early 00's. Maybe even better than the surround is just the pure fidelity of high-res lossless formats that puts CD to shame. I will say, however, that I think Atmos might be a "bridge too far" when remixing albums originally meant for stereo. Alan Parsons did a good job on his recent surround release of the Pyramid album, but I still think I prefer the 5.1 mix. The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was a demo-worthy lossless 5.1 mix for 2 decades. Their recent remix into Atmos is clearly overkill: Things that were fun and distinct in 5.1 placement are now messy and unfocused...just to try to push everything into more speakers.
Best sound ever DTS music on DVD player through 5.1 system. I’m happy that I still have saved a few discs and play them and enjoy so much how they sound. People that have never heard them are missing out for sure
You should try some Atmos music. Apple music and Tidal can do it on some setups. There are some amazing songs with complete immersive sound. Best classics are riders on the storm from the doors (the thunder comes from overhead, singing in front of you and instruments all around). Also ice ice baby is a good system showoff sound
I agree about Atmos, with a few Caveats. 1) It has to be originally mixed for Atmos 2) It needs to be on physical media like Blu Ray Stereo tracks upmixed to Atmos and then streamed in a lossy fashion are underwhelming and, I think, give a poor impression of what Atmos can do. I would suggest listening to Peter Gabriel's or Steven Wilsons latest album on Blu Ray on a good 7.4.1 system. The problem is the cost of admission and the intrusive hardware. It really only makes sense for folks who also want a surround system for movies and TV. I think very few people would put in the time and investment just for the few good Atmos music titles out there.
@mitchese1 Normally I would cut off my ears with blunt scissors before listening to Ice, Ice Baby, but now you have said that, I am going to have to give it a go. Damn you, sir.
@@Techmoan SD camera’s hated those kinds of shirts too. Back in the day of SD television, you were required not to bring a tightly patterned shirt with you, because it would cause a lot of moiré.
Again a perfect presentation of a format by Techmoan! I love how you never dissapoints in making a video about some historic format. DTS CD is very cool. I found it a few years ago and burned some CDs for my own. There are even online communities out there who re-mix SACD and DVD-A/BD-A to DTS CD. It is amazing that these discs are playable in virtually every CD/DVD/BD and AVR combination today. Glad that the two discs you're showing are in fact CDs instead of DVD - weird marketing.
Brilliant trip down DTS CD memory lane! From quirky decoders to confusing cases, you’ve revived a format that deserved better. Now I know what NOT to put in my stereo!
As somebody who worked in audio back in the day, I can say for certain that it was mostly the record producers who were not interested in doing 5.1 audio mixes. There is little benefit, unless maybe it's a live recording. Mixing studios weren't really set up for it and the cost to equip them was very high. In the end, a mix of a band is a forward sound stage, unlike movies that can have things flying around the picture an soundstage. You don't want a random instrument coming out the rear speakers for example. Also, surround mixes don't translate well on headphones or in cars or on boomboxes and not every home listening space is optimal for surround speaker setups, so it's a super niche market. Basically there was little reason to mix an album in surround besides novelty.
Agreed. It can be fun for music with a lot of 'ambient' sounds, like Dark Side Of The Moon. However for most people, the goal of home music reproduction is to reproduce the LIVE CONCERT experience, where the band would be playing in front of you. Meaning that 2 channel Stereo Mastering is perfectly adequate. I haven't attended many concerts where the singer is in front, the drum & bass are at the back of the room, and the guitarists are playing from the sides. lol
Depends. A lot of classical music is coming out in Atmos (and SACD before that) because it helps to recreate the sound of a concert hall, among other things. There's also no rule saying that studio recordings should sound like a live performance. Electronic music is one of the more natural places to actively use surround effects, but it can work well in other genres too. I was just listening to Yule by Trio Mediaeval (basically choral music), and while they mostly use Atmos to create space, they also do some whacky things like blasting drums from the rear channels to great effect.
@@ozzyp97 yes but the landscape is a bit different now compared to 30 years ago when DTS CDs came out. Now surround capable mix rooms are everywhere for starters. Also a large percentage of music, pop, dance, electronica, hip hop, etc, is ITB electronic with less instruments, etc. And yes orchestral and choral music is live music, which is quite suited to the format, especially mixing 'conductors perspective'.
I think it's worth to mention that DTS is lossy compression squashed into the bitstream of uncompressed 44.1 KHz 16 bit Stereo PCM. They use similar compression techniques like AptX, namely ADPCM with a constant bitrate. Regular uncompressed PCM is superior, but only offers two channels of course.
Yeah DTS & Dolby Digital are both compressed formats. Which is why BluRays & new AVRs include 'Dolby TrueHD & DTS-MA/HD' which are LOSSLESS audio formats... Only trouble is the LOSSLESS audio is only offered on physical media, and streaming only offers the old Dolby Digital compressed streams. So to enjoy LOSSLESS audio you have to wait and pray that the movie is eventually released on BluRay, and if you want ATMOS/DTX-X you have to hope it also gets a 4K UHD release. :(
@@StreetPreacherrDTS:X or Atmos can be released on standard blu rays perfectly well, they don't need 4K. Indeed when you get Atmos or DTS:X music only discs that is what they are, since 4K would add manufacturing cost for zero benefit. But it seems studios have decided that for films Atmos or DTS:X goes with 4K.
Yes so I have a good bunch of these. The DTS steam happens to be the same ~1400kbps as CD so it was compatible with that tech. The DVD-Audio layers open up the Meridian Lossless Packing formats of the mix = higher resolution, higher bit rate audio. I don't think I have any DTS-CD with a DVD-audio layer (not sure this is possible) however do have a few mult-format packages with a DTS-CD as well as the DVD-Audio disc (separate) Great to see this topic covered and reminisce the format/s while I look at my collection presently! A little bit of trivia - way back then, I'd found a small bunch of Quadrophonic fans who'd ripped their vinyl and packaged the 4.0 audio into a DVD-Audio ISO. This meant I could hear lots of ultra rare Quad Vinyl through digital means such as Quincy Jones, Paul Simon and a great bunch more. It was yet another format I collected.
One surround format that I look for is Dolby Surround CD’s. here in Canada a company called Intersound released quite a number of said discs , which are purely analog matrix surround like the old SQ / QS quad discs. A simple pro-logic decoder in any home theatre receiver 5.1 setup brings these to life. If not “pro-logic” I think you get mono rear channels. Most of the titles are ( not surprisingly) movie music like Star Wars or Henry Mancini.
In 1970s Europe, there were a number of albums that were recorded and issued *solely* in Quad. If these albums were later re-issued on CD, those CDs were made from a Quad master tape which still contained the SQ/QS matrix signal. If you play such a CD in a DVD player through a 5.1 system, you will hear something that's sorta like vintage 70s Quad sound. (the subwoofer is silent and the centre speaker duplicates everything that that's in the periphery speakers.) Obviously this is not ideal, but it is interesting to hear nonetheless. I once saw a website that listed these CDs with "hidden" Quad in them. The list is handy because the CD packaging and discs offer no clue that the source was a Quad master. If you're interested let me know and I'll look in my bookmarks for it.
These days we are lucky to even get stereo sound. Mono bluetooth speakers, mono FM, DAB, SXM, and HD radio stations, mono UA-cam episodes "demonstrating" left-right player stereo tests...
This is true, but at least speaker technology is a lot better than it was in the past. A small modern mono Bluetooth speaker will usually sound better than say an Amstrad midi system from the 80’s
I am listening to a overwhelming amount of underground hiphop from 80s-00s, ripped from vinyl records that is often mono anyway. Stereo and multichannel makes music more pleasurable to listen, but if the music is bad no amount of channels gonna make it good.
@@radry100 Standard DAB has rather low bandwidth though, so a lot of radio stations on DAB will opt to use mono audio to allow better overall audio quality. This is not an issue with DAB+ but that's not available everywhere.
Have myself a couple of DTS CD's, Eagles Hell Freezes Over sounds amazing, mixed a few of a friend's songs to 5.1 myself as an experiment and burned to DTS CD, love the format 🥰
I have a 5.1 system at home and it's a real shame the format really didn't take off. I have a few DTS surround sound discs that could seen in the video. The sound quality is amazingly good and the surround effect gives the listener a feeling of being 'inside' the music, which I find a very pleasing experience. Better still, I have software where I can create my own DTS 5.1 surround sound discs. The AI stem software around today enables me to create my own 5.1 mixes. It is a very rewarding and addictive hobby to create 5.1 mixes of records that never existed in 5.1, or create 5.1 mixes out of stems lifted from Mono recordings even! I am only limited by my own imagination of what I can create myself!
I got into the DTS audio CD format after buying my first DVD player, not realising that I already had a CD player with an optical output that could have played such discs a year or so before! I'm still listening to surround sound music but today it's in the Blu-ray Audio disc format...
I'm really happy that it's becoming more of a trend for new album releases to come with a Dolby Atmos mix on Blu-ray included. Even if it's just a quadrophonic mix masquerading as Atmos, it's such an immersive way to listen to music.
You are right. I had a quad speaker setup in the early 90s (a 6x9 embedded in each top corner of a room and a large old cabinet stereo as a "woofer"). I was constantly frustrated by how little music media actually took advantage of more than just stereo channels. I ended up resorting to weird EQ and panning tricks to make music sound bigger/more-spatial playing on that system. Sadly those tricks usually required "tuning" things per-song for the best results. Most of the time I used only two "channels" with typical stereo panning because of the complexity.
Surround Sound music (SACD/DVD-A/DTS-CD) are my favourite way to experience music other than live-performance. Some are mixed to give a 'concert hall' ambience whereas others are mixed to play with sound placement and movement.
I still prefer a high end stereo ser up, but I agree that a well mixed surround title on a good AV system is an equally involving, if very different, experience. It's a shame SACD and DVD A titles haven't fallen in price as much as cds, though there are bargains out there. I recently picked up acJapanese SACD of Argos by Wishbone Ash. Works surprisingly well in 5.1
When mixed well I love 5.1 music! Some examples are SACD versions of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Brothers in Arms. But I've also heard mixes of other albums where the stereo mixes are preferable to the 5.1 mixes.
It never ceases to amaze me how much an aging white man from Wigan will go to such lengths to get to listen to his American gangsta rap in the highest quality possible.
@@Techmoan I love your content although your Music tastes completely elude me. I’m only six years older than you but I would literally rather try and sleep in a running cement mixer then listen to rap. I’m more of a Yes fan.
Love the scene with the CRT TV and the Kenwood speakers and hifi all wedged together, a true "mugs" eyeful, I guess someone knew the TV couldn't be switched on as it would show colour interference from the huge magnets in the Kenwood speakers. I know, I did the same thing with a new 14" Sony TV. Later sets had degaussing with fixed/prevented this problem. I've just noticed, my Denon AVR-1611 amp has the DTS logo on the front, but I don't own a DVD/CD player, haven't done for decades.
Good to know I wasn't the only person who noticed and wondered about that- I literally just posted a comment above saying that I hoped the speakers were magnetically-shielded!
I have 2 DTS copies of Alan Parsons "On Air." You are absolutely correct on playing the DTS disk using a CD player. There is nothing but noise. So you had to have a player with a DTS decoder. Thanks for the post . Cheers from Indiana 👍.
I remember hearing a Swedish radio station producing test programs in DTS 5.1 around 2004 one featured Tennis being played in your Head I wish i had kept a copy
Ah! Pete Namlook and his legendary FAX label (ambient genius from the nineties) released twenty or thirty albums in this format in the early 2000s. They were packaged as double discs, the first being normal two track stereo and the second being the same album as DTS 5.1.
I pick up Namlook's dts discs when they pop up cheap enough on discogs....rarer and rarer now. They are a great example of the potential of the 5.1 medium.
I picked up my first two of these DTS 5.1 CDs in the last six months. I got the first one as a mistake. I ordered the first one from a Goodwill thrift store via Amazon thinking it was a DVD-A. After that, I purposely got a second one because a favorite album got a 5.1 DTS CD release, and that appears to be the _only_ time it was ever released in a multichannel format. I knew the format existed for several years.
Yes, I remember them and I have one CD DTS 5.1 Shod be played in a DVD player and using a toslink or single coaxial connected direct to the receiver. Thanks 🙏 for the video
I remember these different formats. I worked at Best Buy around 2000 and we had a small section of the different discs and audio equipment. Thanks for sharing!
Position your speakers in the layout of the four organs of Freiburger Münster and experience a more live-like performance of Bach as Biggs plays them from a single organ console shifting registrations not just from stop to stop but spatially. Spectacular SACD!
And it's becoming even LESS necessary to upgrade to a new AVR since all Streaming Movies are compressed to Dolby Digital, so you don't get any benefit from buying a new top of the line unit capable of playing LOSSLESS TrueHD/DTS-HD formats... This is my biggest complaint about streaming. I can accept the low bitrate video quality, but I spent a fortune on a nice AVR and installing ATMOS speakers in the ceiling, and now I'm stuck listening to LOSSY COMPRESSED Dolby Digital streams again, like it was 2005!
@@StreetPreacherryou do realize your av receiver has the Dolby surround up mixer right? If you use DSU or dts neural X, you can use all of your speakers including your Dolby Atmos speakers
@@sj7624 Yeah, and streamers are now offering COMPRESSED versions of Dolby Digital Atmos, that includes the processing so you get a similar surround sound mix with height channels. Except the audio streams are all COMPRESSED, and there's no way to get a LOSSLESS 'Dolby TrueHD'/DTS-MA/HD audio stream unless the movie is released on BluRay, and then ATMOS/DTS-X is usually reserved for 4K UHD disks... And not every movie even gets a physical release these days, and if they do it's usually MONTHS after the movie has been available on Streaming.
What does that have to do with the PS3? Don't you still need to send the signal through an AVR to process the audio stream? Or does the PS3 have a built in DTS decoder with 5.1 speaker jacks?
@@StreetPreacherr Yes, the PS3 has/had a DTS decoder in it (the original fat version). I remember seeing mine decode a DTS 6.1 ES Discrete movie soundtrack off blu-ray and output it as PCM 6.1/7.1 to my AV receiver.
PS3 was a powerhouse for the day. I bought one because I wanted a blu ray player, and the PS3 was cheaper than anything but the cheapest blue ray players. And it saw FARRR more software support than a standard blue ray player.
@@StreetPreacherrps3 was just the player, youd send the signal through and HDMI or digital out to an AV reciever capable of 5.1... just like any other player
@@nicholasmapes Well, yes, except that the PS3 could decode internally the DTS 5.1 (or Dolby TrueHD 5.1 / 7.1) soundtracks to multi channel PCM and output that signal to your AV receiver.
@mikee2923 yep, I know the recoded format is different, I meant that the physical support of SACD is a DVD. It's not a CD, it's not a BD, and they didn't invent another support for SACD, it is really a DVD and some had a real CD layer, not just a DVD layer with 44-16 PCM audio: I played it in a normal CD player.
DTS CD, DVD Audio, SACD, Blu-ray Audio. It's a shame that multichannel music never broke through. Hell, even stereo is dull now in comparison to the 1970s. I'm still very happy with my upgraded 7.1 setup for movies, music and gaming. Once you experience it you never want to go back.
Agree to disagree, there is a simplicity in a clean stereo mix that I enjoy as much as the rest of the equipment without dipping toes in multichannel. I do use spacial sound on headphones occasionally but it is hard to nail down some details afterwards with something as modern as we get.
A well-engineered stereo record through good speakers can give you fully three-dimensional sound. You just won't be inside it - until you put on headphones.
@@Spearca I wouldn't want to be inside of a recording anyways, bands play at a crowd, not an individual. Stereo or 2.1 just makes more sense for music tbh
Having (relatively recently) moved into my own place and getting an Atmos setup (albeit a sound bar… with real tears!) I’ve gotten into surround music. DTS CDs are a very interesting format. Worth mentioning that anyone can *burn* a DTS CD, it burns as a standard audio track as to any CD. The jam band community has taken advantage of this to mix certain Grateful Dead (and adjacent bands) and Phish shows in DTS 5.1, usually with the Soundboard recording using the fronts, the Audience recording using the rears, and the vocals and bass mux’d together to the center and sub respectively. The result is a surprisingly effective “as if you were there” concert mix that sounds crystal clear up front (in the stage) and gives you crowd/room ambience in the rears
Today there is mass production for single smartphone speakers. 😆 I've noticed that fewer and fewer people around me are interested in surround sound. Just as 3D TVs have disappeared again, surround sound for the home is also likely to slip into a fringe group. Most people buy a soundbar, sometimes with a subwoofer, and that's it. Or are you observing something else?
I've noticed the same. Gen Z in particular aren't remotely interested in audio quality. The upside being that the old AV receivers and home cinema systems from 15-20 years ago can now be picked up for pennies because folk don't like having visible speaker wires. (I never understood the 3D fad - it just gave me a migraine, esoecially on small screens.)
I've been trying to sell my friends on surround sound for ages. When they come over to my house and hear it they're blown away but then when I offer to set one up for them because I've found them for so cheap they become disinterested. Who wouldn't want better sound for literally pennies on the dollar?! (Angry Millennial here)
Sound bars have already killed surround sound 5.1 I bought a surround sound and 1080p TV as soon as they came out and rarely enjoyed real high quality surround in movies. Same with music - everything is stereo to 4 speakers. You really have to push yourself to to get the best dvds and blurays and high quality satelite and cable and buy special 5.1 music to ever get your moneys worth out of those back speakers. Companies are just not investing money and time into making high quality sound. Even now with the next big thing in Dolby ceiling speakers and 4k bluray object oriented sound you can easily buy a disk to only realise that the sound is garbage compared to what is suposed to be. The investment is really not worth it for young people who have streaming musing on phones and netflix to go buy a 5000 dollar equipment to get a whoompf out of their 5 favourite movies and songs. First companies need to be held to a higher standard, lower standards must be penalised, so companies dont default to them, then hardware and licensed content needs to go down in price and more mainstream to get everyone to stop buyng cheaper "surround" sound solutions. Even in mobile devices - phones with one audio speaker and no audio jacks should be unacceptable. Mobile devices CAN and should have surround sound speakers, high quality dacs and jacks for headphones. Companies just go with the cheapest option because they can use the money to slap 5 cameras in the back to make people buy their phone this year. Its ridiculous.
Having said all this... there seems to be a Gen Z interest in Atmos and Samsung is just about to launch their new Glasses Free 3d gaming monitor at 27" for the same age group
I guess I was one of those "enthusiasts" back in the late 90s and I had (and still have) seven of those DTS Music Discs. The first one I spotted was Alan Parsons "On Air", which was one of the launch titles of that format and being an avid fan of Alan Parsons and the late Eric Wollfson I spent about 70 Deutsche Mark for it back then (as far as I can remember, might have been even more). If you take the historic inflation into account, that's about 55 Euro today and thereby much more than the 1.99 Pound price tag on Matt's disc 😄). By the way it was sold in a standard Jewel Case back then (like all "normal" CDs) and I am pretty sure that decision made it even harder to sell them, because people would have flipped though the shelves at their preferred store and thought: why pay so much extra for a regular CD?!? All other discs that I bought later had this "DVD Audio" packaging - so I guess they quickly learned that they need to differentiate not just by sound quality but as well in terms of optics 😉) I anyone is interested: my current DTS Audio CD catalogue contains of: - Alan Parsons - On Air (1996) - The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over (1997) - Diana Krall - Love Scenes (1998) - Sting - Brand New Day (1999) - Sting - Ten Summoner's Tales (1999) - Don Henley - The End Of The Innocence (2000) - The Police - Every Breath You Take (2000) Especially Alan Parsons and the Eagles just blew me away on my 5.1 System back then 🙂 I still love them all and enjoy them from time to time.
Crumbs it takes me back to my visit to "Live 95" consumer electronics show in Earls Court where DTS was "the thing" back then. Bought a Kenwood Sub Woofer SW500 there which we still own and use today and makes it 30yrs old this year, considering its left switched on 24/7 I am amazed its still working, although back then Kenwood built some decent stuff. It must be one of the longest owned bits of electronic kit that I have thats still being used today.
My wife's 2004 Acura TL played DTS Audio, so I picked up a few discs. Some DVD players also played the format. I still play them occasionally on the DVD player (the Acura is long gone). I really like the sound. The discs were crazy expensive a few years ago ($75 range), but I just checked and they seem to have lost their collector's appeal.
I had a 5.1 Sony DTS amp that I used with a DLP projector in the late 90s. When the amp died and DLP bulbs became the cost of a new TV, I never felt a need to replace that setup to have the same experience. The tech that goes into re-creating positional audio with only a 2-channel stream on headphones has advanced to the point to where it's close enough.
PlayStation 2 had a lot to do with putting the DVD format in homes. It was an either all in one machine, or in many cases, cheaper than stand alone players at the time.
Nah DVD players were cheap as chips in the UK. No-one would ever think of going to the expense of getting a PS2 and think ooo I've got a DVD player too 😂
I remember those times, talking about PS2 it was very often mentioned it's the cheapest option to get a DVD player (AND you got a game console). I am not sure if that was completely true, but PS2 still stays at the first place of best selling game consoles of all time.
DTS's cinema system was similarly proprietary - proprietary sound readers for the projectors (which only read timecode off of the films), and then a special box to decode and play back the DTS audio which was distributed on CDs and DVDs (and now USB for modern 70mm releases). Its incredibly finicky but sticks around since it superseded 70mm stereo magnetic.
In my country the earliest multi channel experiment was over the radio: one stereo receiver is at the front receiving station "A" while the other stereo receiver is behind the listener receiving station "B", creating a four channel experimental sound stage. Because usually peoples not had more than one stereo receiver at home, this experiment was stopped after just a few times.
We live in an age now where most people don’t even have a stereo music system. They play their music either just on their headphones or at best a mono Bluetooth speaker (albeit one that probably sounds pretty good).
Connecting two identical mono Bluetooth speakers to each other via Bluetooth can make the speakers assume the identities of two pure L/R stereo speakers, which improves the sound quality a lot. Best of all, the young person will readily accept the second speaker because it is their favourite model they decided to acquire in the first place. For further details, please watch a Techmoan video titled: Are two B&O A1 speakers more than twice as good as one?
I used to work at a cinema. Before everything went digital there was different ways to deliver dts and dolby digital surround sound for the movies. One of the ways was actually media like this. :) There was a 4U rack decoder system that handled the different systems that itself was 2U devices - one for each type.
Thanks for another great video, Mat. Today’s my birthday and I must admit as soon as I learned it would be on a Saturday this year, I was looking forward to seeing a fresh episode of techmoan 🎉
YES. one of my favorite format ever. I hoped you'd cover it someday and that day has finally come. Pete Namlook, one of my favorites artists, had produced over 40 DTS-CDs on his label. My dream would be to collect them all one day, but they were limited editions that are next to impossible to find nowdays.
I *think* I have all of the Namlook DTS releases. I was a bit of a completist with his stuff. IIRC he started releasing them around 2005, and then every album after that got the 5.1 DTS treatment. The only problem was that the double pack CD/dtsCD were over £20 each. But, Pete Namlook was releasing dts titles right up until his untimely death in 2012, so well after the timeframe covered in this video.
@gardenshedstudios dang. I'd like to see pictures of that, must be pretty huge. Have you also ripped them all? there's some that i haven't even found anywhere on the internet.
@@ora2j251 I've just counted the dts discs in my collection. There were 29 individual albums and four "ambient gardner" compilations released in the format, I still occasionally take a trip down memory lane and listen to them on my Blu-Ray home cinema system.
Man I used to love these I miss them so much. They were so great for electronic music. I used to listen with a magnepan surround system. So unbelievable! Yes I had five magnepan speakers surrounding me 😊
First thing I ever had on DTS was Galaxy Quest. I was so excited to see the blue DTS decoder light on my brand new setup turn on. Never knew it came out this early, very cool video! (I'm still a DTS fan, I really like my current DTS 5.1 setup)
I was a 35mm projectionist towards the end of the 35mm era. We had two auditoriums each with a dts 6D processor retrofitted onto 1960's projectors, and 5 that just used the analog audio strip on 35mm. The difference was unreal. The film reels usually came shipped from the studio with the matching dts audio disc(s) tossed in the box in a paper sleeve. Pretty neat system, the dts used a light sensor to sync the disk playback with the film's timecode track. Since advertisments usually weren't dts encoded, the system would use the analog audio from the film strip until the first timecode mark, and automatically swich to digital audio. The dts 6d would make a cool video, but they're large and heavy. It had 3 disc drives, and a dot-matrix lcd for , channel levels, preamp settings, per-channel equalizers, timing & sync etc. Pretty advanced for 90's tech
I'd love to see a walkthrough of one of them. Techmoan should do specials with complex things like that
@ maybe even a tour of a 35mm projection booth. There are still a bunch left in the UK. The mix of analog and digital would make an awesome special episode
@@mikebrodeur12 I would absolutely love to see that in as much nerdy detail as you can possibly go into!
DTS ROM is still the best
@@bobbym6130I agree, but that would mean for Techmoan to make the most complex episodes that have potentially the smallest amont of interested viewers. Spmehow I think he won't.
We had DTS in the Cinema, in which i worked 2005-2010.
I still remember, after I had inserted the celluloid film, I also had to insert two CDs into a strange player.
Once there was an lion related error in the system that I will never forget.
The movie was a James Bond flick that started with the typical MGM lion roar. The first half of the movie played normally.
Then came a scene in which James Bond was sneaking through a corridor...
Suddenly a lion roared!
And James didn't even react to it!
The whole audience looked around in confusion.
Well...
What had happened?
Turnes out, sound didn't change from CD1 to CD2, but repeated CD1. 😁
Great story, I guess 007 doesn't scare easily!
That is incredible! I'm cracking up. Which Bond film was it?
@@JWD19922005-2010 only had one movie, Quantum of Solace, so probably that one 😂
@ Casino Royale was 2006.
@@TomSwartz Fun fact, I'm in the background of the airport scene from Quantum of Solace, but digitally edited out and replaced with mountains ... It wasn't really filmed in Austria :)
Matt - (aside from wearing cool shirts all the time) thanks for making the best retro-tech videos on UA-cam! You do such an amazing job and I doubt you get the recognition you deserve or the $$ you deserve. You bring interesting retro consumer AV equipment equipment to a platform where a broad audience can appreciate tech history and clever designs. And you realistically tackle repairs of old equipment, showing all the ups and downs and inspiring the rest of us to attempt such things. You exhibit a quiet competence that every immediately recognizes and makes you a credible source of information. All the best!
And you should start a Techmoan branded line of shirts. I’d buy some, like the one you are wearing in this episode.
With 1,400,000 Subscribers and 4,000 paying members and hundreds of millions of views I don't think you need worry about Matts recognition or $$ because he certainly wont be.
3:50 Ah yes, the days when your hi-fi system was bigger than your TV! 🤣
What's sad is that- despite the datedly small (by modern standards) and grey TV- that setup with its late 80s aesthetic still looks *way* cooler and more desirable than anything modern to me.
Yes, I was an 80s kid, why do you ask?
(For the TV's sake, I hope those speakers are magnetically shielded, though.)
My speakers are just as big in my stereo corner, but they can’t rival my 240x200cm (or whatever) projector. 🤪
Oh! That's a strong shirt! ❤
A great one!
Brave strong shirt lol
Hints of curious droid
In the last scene before the outro, the shirt is really messing with the UA-cam compression at 1080p.
He just wanted to add some colors to the dts cd sound.
In the early 2000s the Pink Floyd RoIO/bootleg scene you couild download the quad versions of Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here as a DTS CD. A lot cheaper than buying a vintage quad system. They sounded great (AHEM - so I'm told) via my AV receiver. Great vid boss!
I remember that very disk, "a friend had one" 🤫
Sadly, most were up mixed to 5.1. There was however a genuine DVD "extracted" version existed too. The best version is from 2023. There's a 5.1 Surround Mix encoded in dts-HD MA / Dolby Atmos / DD+ / 24bit 96kHz uncompressed version. It's totally remastered. The Dark Side Of The Moon - 50th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set, however cost about £300 though.
okay that’s all well and good but once i’ve tracked down all the hardware, i’ve now got to track down some gentleman in the city to sell me the requisite recreational materials to enjoy it
Remember that too.
I had a DTS encoding program on my computer and used to make surround versions of all kinds of things, including Pink Floyd.
I had a handful of DTS audio discs. They were an interesting novelty. Pro tip, the tracks can be ripped to FLAC and streamed on a network. The decoder will still process the audio.
Xbox will decode them as well. I had a handful of surround FLAC on a USB stick and would play on Xbox One.
@@RyanRiopel Interesting.... would my Series X play a DTS CD ? Something I might just try...
@@TheCoolDave doubt it, but please let us know lol
well OH how I strive M O R E P U P P E T S in '25 .
SACD was fantastic.
The craziest time period was in the early 2000s when movies were still being released to theaters with those DTS audio track CDs despite the encryption on them having been cracked for years. Every bootleg movie had immaculate audio for a time lol
I do remember some good-sounding bootlegs, now that you mention it 😅
Bootlegs in black and white visual but DTS Audio were a thing I experienced as a child. Such a weird time.
Nearly all bootlegging and pirate circles involve people inside the industry. Be that people in the mastering house or the theatre. You can still get good audio by plugging directly into the audio rack with a cable to a recording device or over the hearing impaired broadcast. On torrent sites they'll be listed as telesync or TS.
I remember the ultimate editions of the Bond movies on dvd having an option for DTS audio. It really blew my my mind at the time
my memory is that movie pirate group Centropy was the first to crack the dts discs, and an SVCD of The Matrix was their first release with it. It was a very big deal at the time.
I had an audiophile room mate back in the 1990s and I remember him raving about DTS but don't recall ever seeing this format, it seems to me that surround sound on audio only just never seem to take off except for a small handful of very dedicated enthusiasts. He sold me a Dolby Pro Logic amp that I loved, and he of course had Dolby Digital that sounded just amazing. Miss that guy, he would have loved your channel but unfortunately passed away a few years ago.
I have a now ancient RCA 5.1 system that has DTS and Pro Logic and I love that even when playing records (through an amp and then into the “tape” input) I get the pseudo surround sound of pro logic.
My condolences
Funniest audiophile story I've had was when a bandmate was showing off a hi-fi system worth ~$10k in 2000 dollars, and we spent all night listening to Ween! 🤣
Now wait just a minute... As you can see, I'm very much alive!
I had a second hand super luxury Volvo V70 Summum years ago, leather and heated everything - with a surround sound system including DTS CD! Pink Floyd sounded amazing circling around the car!
If you had the Volvo you would get the model correct 😂😂😂
@@GEODUCK9
I'm guessing he forgot the '0' is all.
@@GEODUCK9 You’re right, it was 20 years ago. It was a V70 Summum to be very exact with a 2.5 litre turbo engine. Getting mixed up with the D5.
Oh I remember that radio, the premium one with the center speaker on the dash.
I worked at a used Volvo dealer at the time, I never had a CD to demonstrate the radio.
A few years after that I worked at an Acura dealer and their premium stereos could do DVD audio. We had a demo disk for those cars since it was a new car dealer.
Listening to 5.1 music is amazing if you have a great amp and drivers. There are some luxury cars that have stereos that have the decoder and separation in the cabin's speakers. It really adds a very nice spatial dimension to music besides stereo.
I agree. I have an old Lexus LS460 with a Mark Levinson system that plays DTS and SACD, DVD-A, it is one of the best places to listen to music. The cabin was apparently 'tuned' to optimise music play back. Sounds great with good source material.
I watched Jurassic Park in 1993 with DTS sound here in central america, it sounded awesome, so much so that because of it, I always pursue movies under the DTS format, I think is way better than Dolby digital and it should be, since it has a double the bitrate. I have watched a couple of movies in recent years and even though the theaters have atmos configs and you can hear stuff above you, it doesnt sound as sharp as nor as lively as, with DTS. At home I have a dts capable soundbar and a 5.1 pc setup and when I play a dts movie vs truehd (or simple atmos), which is the equivalent to dts-hd in bitrate terms, simple dts is still king and you can hear the difference. The Dark Knight was awesome in the theater, by then, one can assume that was DTS-HD. I think most people are deaf and cant hear the difference, which is why lesser formats like atmos are winning, sad indeed.
Perfect timing for this video. I've been ripping all sorts of 5.1, 7.1 etc albums to SSD to listen to in my 2025 Explorer. Sounds absolutely incredible.
I have a 2008 Acura MDX with the ELS surround system. It’s fantastic. I’ve had several cars I’ve installed discrete 5.1 systems in with PC-based carputers loaded with 5.1 music as well. The car is an amazing showcase for surround music.
I happen to talk about Multichannel releases on my channel and post my own 5.1 mixes.
youtube.com/@anteronblocker?si=FE2MAOStW7zubTWR
For what it's worth, a surprising number of American automobiles came with tape decks that supported quadraphonic stereo.
Quadraphonic was a big deal when I was a kid in the 70s, my uncle had it in his car, my folks had quad in the living room. Quad 8-tracks were awesome to listen to.
My '78 Lincoln Mark V had a Quadraphonic 8-track player, but I could never find any 8-tracks to test it!
They were out there. It was neat how they worked. It seemed that the recording use two tracks for one side, both front and rear. Then the other 2 tracks for the other side, front and rear. Then the actual piece of tape was twice as long to hold the whole recording.
@@paul5683 Yes, the quad 8 track tapes only had program A and B. I think there was a notch in the cartridge that told the player to only do 2 instead of the normal 4 programs. Come to think of it, I remember my uncle complaining that the quad 8 tracks were a bit more prone to failure, so I guess more tape crammed into the cartridge may have hurt longevity. I vaguely remember some quad 8 tracks coming as 2 tape sets.
A name you'll see over and over again on these discs is Brad Miller. Brad was a big proponent of Quadraphonic sound in the 70's and put out a number of ambient sound albums (like trains, thunderstorms, etc) on his own Soundbird record label, then moving into the "Mystic Moods" albums distributed by Warner Brothers. He even participated in a number of Quadraphonic-FM radio experiments. There is an anecdote that in the 90's when he and a group of others came up with DTS, it was originally to be a 4.0 (Quad) speaker setup. When this idea was pitched to the record labels, they balked fearing they didn't want to go through another Quad debacle.... Brad, thinking on his feet came up with the idea of 5.1 on the spot claiming it's better than Quad! This was enough to sell the record executives - the idea of a center speaker and a subwoofer. The joke was on them as many of those initial DTS Discs are nothing more than the original Quadraphonic master tape with a phony or "derived" center and subwoofer channel. Suffice to say though, the BTO, Steve Miller, Paul McCartney, Ohio Players and Eric Clapton titles are all simply the original Quadraphonic Masters put to a DTS CD. There are those in the Quad Community who feel a lot of the reason that Mobile Fidelity / DTS / HDS abandoned the idea around the turn of the century was that Brad Miller passed away in 1998.
Myself, I've been HUGE into Quad for almost 30 years now. Sure, I missed the initial push in the 70's.... but I've been collecting Quad 8-tracks and Quad LP's for most of my life and have amassed an impressive collection plus, a fully-functional vintage Quad playback system. I have over 600 Quad 8-tracks and in the neighborhood of 100 CD-4 LPs and yes, a small selection of these commercial DTS discs as well as several hundred home-brew DTS discs containing vintage Quadraphonic albums on them. In the days when pretty much every record label eschewed the idea of surround sound, there were those of us who took it upon ourselves to maintain and preserve many of the Quad albums by converting them into the digital domain. In my case, I also had a 4.0-capable stereo system in my daily driver automobile so I could listen to Quad/Surround on the road.
Today, we're enjoying a bit of a resurgence in Surround sound or Quad in that a few years back, an outfit called "Audio Fidelity" put out a number of vintage Quad albums on SACD, and today; a company in the UK called Dutton-Vocalion is also re-releasing a plethora of vintage Quad albums on SACD. They have done well over 100 titles to date. Even jumping back on the wagon after a bit of a false start is Rhino Handmade here in the states that are re-releasing Quadraphonic content on Blu-Ray discs including some vintage unreleased albums! It's a very groovy time to be into Quad.
Did he tell them that 5.1 was 1.1 better than Quad? ('hem)
I was Brad's business partner. He and i owned the Millennium which we issued to give the consumer a inexpensive way to listen to these discs. We did not want to issue the quad discs in 5.1, we were forced to, by DTS Entertainment as a way to keep things the same as new discs were going to come in 5.1. We sat in my basement listening to quad 8 tracks, and i gave him a list of titles we should attempt to get from Sony. We entered Sony thru the backdoor, special marketing. Things were coming to and end as many companies were starting to enter the market, but we knew DTS entertainent was going away soon. Brad got cancer and that was the final straw in the drink. His wife actually had the Johnny Mathis title released after his departure, as we still had the contract with Sony and she was a fan.
Also Pentatone label released a lot of SACDS in 4.0 from the Philips and Deutsche Grammophon classical recordings of the 70s that where recorded for quadaphonic but in the 70s where only released in stereo because of the limitations of decoding from vinyl LPs. But sadly the EMI quadraphonic SQ encoded LPs where never sytematically re-released in a modern (discrete) surround format. I use an Surround Master from Involve Audio to decode them (supports both QS and SQ decoding).
I have a couple of surround sound physical discs and they sound awesome. Love this format, dvd audio, sacd and now blu ray audio. Some of the mixes can be missed, but when it’s done right, it’s unparalleled in my opinion.
I know this is neither here nor there, but I LOVE that car print shirt pattern!
I’m glad I’m not the only one! It’s hypnotic without lapsing into moire.
A pattern that complex must have been so expensive
that shirt is so fly it requires 4k to view
Fun fact about 16:04 with streaming services:
On Apple Music, all of their Dolby Atmos mixed music can still be played on regular 5.1/7.1 surround setups, since it's just downmixing the existing Atmos track in the same way as what happens with movies on disc and streaming nowadays.
You'll be missing any actual Atmos objects the mix might contain, but yes, the base layer is just regular Dolby TrueHD, which is again backwards compatible with even older gear. The biggest problem is finding a compatible streamer, as far as I know Apple Music basically only works with an Apple TV, while Tidal requires an Nvidia Shield TV.
As I understood it, part of the Atmos decoding standard is logic to figure out how to downmix or upmix to whatever the audio system is set up for on the fly.
The 5.1 or 7.1 base layer of Atmos, whether lossless True HD on blu ray or lossy Dolby Digital+ for streaming, contains all of the sound including the Atmos objects. So if you play them in 5.1 or 7.1 you hear everything. If decoded as Atmos there is meta data which tells the decoder how to remove the relevant audio objects from the 5.1/7.1 and where to play them in the Atmos sound field.
I never cared much for surround music, but for amateur remixers like myself, DTS CDs, DVD-A, and SACDs were a great source for high-quality stems and vocal tracks for home remixing projects. Here in Buenos Aires, there's a place called Teatro Ciego (Blind Theatre) where you can listen to these surround formats with proper equipment in a completely dark room. It's a really interesting experience.
Ooh if i ever visit Buenos aires ill have to go visit.
Sounds wild, I’d love to try that
Same, never cared for surround music and never even ever saw one in real life, but I totally love 5.1 since like 2004, music sounded so crazy with upmix, sometimes using effects and for movies and games with real 5.1 was crazy, I remember like on GTA San Andreas the helicopters going all around my room 😎
I had (and still have) quite a few of these discs. I always got a kick out of listening to them. These came AFTER the DTS LaserDiscs, but not long after (source: I was there and a big DTS fan back them). They may have mastered them before LaserDisc DTS but they didn't sell them before. The home DTS tech was a drastically different CODEC than the theatrical version. In fact the company split with one of them handling all the home stuffs.
Oh man I have a million of these. I wish this would have continued as a niche for us 5.1 music nuts. These sounded absolutely fantastic! Sting had a bunch of releases. On a home theater these are hard to beat they sound so good. Such a shame they just didn't keep releasing these.
I think one of the reasons people may not have gotten into them, besides the price of a proper player, was the price of the individual cd's. I had a player and system, but found the cost of the cd's to be almost double than the standard. Also, in my case, my system wouldn't allow tonal changes, it was like they wanted you to experience it as it was recorded, and that was it. Only my two cents worth.
With SACD (Super Audio CD) and Apple Music streaming in 3D audio (Dolby atmos) you have much more music content now in surround. Also audio only Blue Ray is available.
@MatadorBaukasten I've heard all of these services surround sound and they all sound like total dog shit. I have Amazon music, love it but the Atmos music is so compressed it's a joke. They don't sound a tenth of what DTS CDs sounded like. I have heard all the services too. Compressed the shit out of it.
@@JC-bl9bo The releases on physical media like Blue Ray and SACD are HiRes uncompressed. DTS is a lossy format. With Amazon music I have no experience I only use Apple Music which offers also HiRes in Stereo or lossy Surround. But of course Loudness war is another storry.
I'm surprised Matt, "Techmoan" missed this one. The same process also applied to AC3 or Dolby Digital files. I used to hunt down on the web .ac3 files from the obscure, new age, Swedish experimental radio broadcasting e.t.c , (extracted .ac3 files from DVD's) then converted to .wav files and burnt on a CD-R as the "Red Book standard" only then as a 44,1 kHz audio, but I could play back on my 5.1 system and listen to glorious surround sound on CD.
From the mid 80's to the late 90's I had a 70's SQ Quad set-up.
The beauty with SQ is you could record the stereo L & R signals from the record onto reel to reel, 8-Track, a computer or any other stereo audio recording device and play them back through the decoder to get the same rich Quad sound and seperation.
My only exposure to DTS CD was a fan-made 5.1 surround mix of the Queen II album that was "released" on DTS CD. It's quite clever how the technology works; the compressed DTS 5.1 track uses the exact same bitrate as a stereo PCM track on an audio CD, so it has no additional requirements for the CD player with regards to bandwidth or playback features. And since it's just raw bits read off of a disc, if you get those bit-for-bit to a decoder via a digital TOSlink connection, the decoder won't know or care that it originated from a CD and will happily decompress the 5.1 audio.
That shirt also doubles as the copy protection for Manic Miner on the Spectrum.
Nice Christmas present 🎄
LOL
One of the most useful things of the DTS-CD format was the ability to make your own. This provided hobbyists that like to digitize their tapes and records a way to digitize their quad records and tapes, and also provided a way for people to share rare and out of print quad titles that were hard to find and expensive on eBay. Also, many of the DTS-CD releases, such as that Ohio Players discs you have, were actually quad mixes that had generated center and LFE channels - I recommend muting the center when playing those. Most switched over to creating dvd-a discs once software to do that came along.
I love/loved DTS. It was my introduction to 5.1 music, prior to DVD-A and SACD. I bought a few when I picked up my first DTS DVD player and 5.1 system around 2000. I still have quite a few.
I've had my (Linux) computer output encoded to dts with dcaenc and fed via TOSLINK to an AV Receiver for many, many years. Has always been great for multi-channel audio and OpenAL spatial audio in games. dts/dca is absolutely good enough, 5.1ch 48k 24bit, I know that's not what people call HD audio, but let's be honest nobody can actually hear the difference...
Best sound ever for music in 5.1 is DTS. I got into it a little late buying music DVD with DTS. The sound is amazing. Miss it so much because it made you feel like you were close to the stage where the band was playing
Coffee and Techmoan on a Saturday morning. Couldn´t be better.
I wish I was as easy to please as you.
Couldn't agree more, exactly what I'm doing only with a cup of hot chocolate!
Yep. It reminds me of looking forward to Saturday morning cartoons as a kid in the 80s. Except now I'm a grown up (ugh) and the 'toys' are bigger, more expensive and generally obsolete!
@@rich_edwards79
I'm just revelling in buying up stuff cheaply where I can and being a child again!
Atari 2600 and ST and a Matchbox 'Monza' Powertrack to play with!😂
I agree, only I watched cartoons in the early'60!.@@rich_edwards79
I love 5.1 music! I got a SACD demo disc from a Rolling Stone magazine when I was in high school. And it worked on my fat PS3 with 5.1 dvd home theater system. So I then got Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral and With Teeth on DualDisc. Both are amazing in surround sound. I buy 1 or 2 DVD-Audio/Bluray Audio a year mostly of old stuff. My latest was David Bowie Ziggy Stardust. But mainly I listen to Dolby Atmos on Apple music with my 5.1.2 system. The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and Pink Floyd DSOTM and The Beatles sound amazing in Atmos and a lot of newer music is released in the format too.
I've been an avid collector of surround music since they came out in the early 00's. Maybe even better than the surround is just the pure fidelity of high-res lossless formats that puts CD to shame. I will say, however, that I think Atmos might be a "bridge too far" when remixing albums originally meant for stereo. Alan Parsons did a good job on his recent surround release of the Pyramid album, but I still think I prefer the 5.1 mix. The Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots was a demo-worthy lossless 5.1 mix for 2 decades. Their recent remix into Atmos is clearly overkill: Things that were fun and distinct in 5.1 placement are now messy and unfocused...just to try to push everything into more speakers.
I was going to mention SACD and how I had a couple of Nine Inch Nails releases but you beat me to it!
Best sound ever DTS music on DVD player through 5.1 system. I’m happy that I still have saved a few discs and play them and enjoy so much how they sound. People that have never heard them are missing out for sure
You should try some Atmos music. Apple music and Tidal can do it on some setups. There are some amazing songs with complete immersive sound.
Best classics are riders on the storm from the doors (the thunder comes from overhead, singing in front of you and instruments all around).
Also ice ice baby is a good system showoff sound
@@mitchese1Thanks! Had no clue that existed, but looked up Tubular Bells and it's on Tidal in Atmos, just a shame I found out at 445 am lol
I agree about Atmos, with a few Caveats.
1) It has to be originally mixed for Atmos
2) It needs to be on physical media like Blu Ray
Stereo tracks upmixed to Atmos and then streamed in a lossy fashion are underwhelming and, I think, give a poor impression of what Atmos can do.
I would suggest listening to Peter Gabriel's or Steven Wilsons latest album on Blu Ray on a good 7.4.1 system.
The problem is the cost of admission and the intrusive hardware. It really only makes sense for folks who also want a surround system for movies and TV. I think very few people would put in the time and investment just for the few good Atmos music titles out there.
@mitchese1 Normally I would cut off my ears with blunt scissors before listening to Ice, Ice Baby, but now you have said that, I am going to have to give it a go. Damn you, sir.
Sir, you really get deep in your topics as well as your repairs. Long time listener!
It wouldn't be a Saturday without the latest video from Techmoan. The closing theme song stuck in my head for the rest of the day...😊
Absolutely fascinating! Had no idea this format had existed and it was interesting to see the crossover with DVD-A! Great video as always, Mat 😊
That shirt is absolutely amazing. Even better if the missus hates it. Which I hope she does.
Oh yes, she can’t stand it.
@@Techmoan Well if it makes her feel better, the UA-cam video compression seems to have taken her side on the matter.
@@GasparLewis 😂
I can agree on that one.
@@Techmoan SD camera’s hated those kinds of shirts too. Back in the day of SD television, you were required not to bring a tightly patterned shirt with you, because it would cause a lot of moiré.
Again a perfect presentation of a format by Techmoan! I love how you never dissapoints in making a video about some historic format.
DTS CD is very cool. I found it a few years ago and burned some CDs for my own. There are even online communities out there who re-mix SACD and DVD-A/BD-A to DTS CD. It is amazing that these discs are playable in virtually every CD/DVD/BD and AVR combination today.
Glad that the two discs you're showing are in fact CDs instead of DVD - weird marketing.
Brilliant trip down DTS CD memory lane! From quirky decoders to confusing cases, you’ve revived a format that deserved better. Now I know what NOT to put in my stereo!
As somebody who worked in audio back in the day, I can say for certain that it was mostly the record producers who were not interested in doing 5.1 audio mixes.
There is little benefit, unless maybe it's a live recording. Mixing studios weren't really set up for it and the cost to equip them was very high.
In the end, a mix of a band is a forward sound stage, unlike movies that can have things flying around the picture an soundstage. You don't want a random instrument coming out the rear speakers for example.
Also, surround mixes don't translate well on headphones or in cars or on boomboxes and not every home listening space is optimal for surround speaker setups, so it's a super niche market.
Basically there was little reason to mix an album in surround besides novelty.
Agreed. It can be fun for music with a lot of 'ambient' sounds, like Dark Side Of The Moon. However for most people, the goal of home music reproduction is to reproduce the LIVE CONCERT experience, where the band would be playing in front of you. Meaning that 2 channel Stereo Mastering is perfectly adequate.
I haven't attended many concerts where the singer is in front, the drum & bass are at the back of the room, and the guitarists are playing from the sides. lol
Depends. A lot of classical music is coming out in Atmos (and SACD before that) because it helps to recreate the sound of a concert hall, among other things.
There's also no rule saying that studio recordings should sound like a live performance. Electronic music is one of the more natural places to actively use surround effects, but it can work well in other genres too. I was just listening to Yule by Trio Mediaeval (basically choral music), and while they mostly use Atmos to create space, they also do some whacky things like blasting drums from the rear channels to great effect.
@@ozzyp97 yes but the landscape is a bit different now compared to 30 years ago when DTS CDs came out. Now surround capable mix rooms are everywhere for starters. Also a large percentage of music, pop, dance, electronica, hip hop, etc, is ITB electronic with less instruments, etc.
And yes orchestral and choral music is live music, which is quite suited to the format, especially mixing 'conductors perspective'.
I think it's worth to mention that DTS is lossy compression squashed into the bitstream of uncompressed 44.1 KHz 16 bit Stereo PCM. They use similar compression techniques like AptX, namely ADPCM with a constant bitrate. Regular uncompressed PCM is superior, but only offers two channels of course.
Yeah DTS & Dolby Digital are both compressed formats. Which is why BluRays & new AVRs include 'Dolby TrueHD & DTS-MA/HD' which are LOSSLESS audio formats... Only trouble is the LOSSLESS audio is only offered on physical media, and streaming only offers the old Dolby Digital compressed streams. So to enjoy LOSSLESS audio you have to wait and pray that the movie is eventually released on BluRay, and if you want ATMOS/DTX-X you have to hope it also gets a 4K UHD release. :(
@@StreetPreacherrDTS:X or Atmos can be released on standard blu rays perfectly well, they don't need 4K. Indeed when you get Atmos or DTS:X music only discs that is what they are, since 4K would add manufacturing cost for zero benefit. But it seems studios have decided that for films Atmos or DTS:X goes with 4K.
Yes so I have a good bunch of these. The DTS steam happens to be the same ~1400kbps as CD so it was compatible with that tech. The DVD-Audio layers open up the Meridian Lossless Packing formats of the mix = higher resolution, higher bit rate audio. I don't think I have any DTS-CD with a DVD-audio layer (not sure this is possible) however do have a few mult-format packages with a DTS-CD as well as the DVD-Audio disc (separate)
Great to see this topic covered and reminisce the format/s while I look at my collection presently!
A little bit of trivia - way back then, I'd found a small bunch of Quadrophonic fans who'd ripped their vinyl and packaged the 4.0 audio into a DVD-Audio ISO. This meant I could hear lots of ultra rare Quad Vinyl through digital means such as Quincy Jones, Paul Simon and a great bunch more. It was yet another format I collected.
One surround format that I look for is Dolby Surround CD’s. here in Canada a company called Intersound released quite a number of said discs , which are purely analog matrix surround like the old SQ / QS quad discs. A simple pro-logic decoder in any home theatre receiver 5.1 setup brings these to life. If not “pro-logic” I think you get mono rear channels. Most of the titles are ( not surprisingly) movie music like Star Wars or Henry Mancini.
In 1970s Europe, there were a number of albums that were recorded and issued *solely* in Quad. If these albums were later re-issued on CD, those CDs were made from a Quad master tape which still contained the SQ/QS matrix signal. If you play such a CD in a DVD player through a 5.1 system, you will hear something that's sorta like vintage 70s Quad sound. (the subwoofer is silent and the centre speaker duplicates everything that that's in the periphery speakers.) Obviously this is not ideal, but it is interesting to hear nonetheless. I once saw a website that listed these CDs with "hidden" Quad in them. The list is handy because the CD packaging and discs offer no clue that the source was a Quad master. If you're interested let me know and I'll look in my bookmarks for it.
These days we are lucky to even get stereo sound. Mono bluetooth speakers, mono FM, DAB, SXM, and HD radio stations, mono UA-cam episodes "demonstrating" left-right player stereo tests...
This is true, but at least speaker technology is a lot better than it was in the past. A small modern mono Bluetooth speaker will usually sound better than say an Amstrad midi system from the 80’s
I am listening to a overwhelming amount of underground hiphop from 80s-00s, ripped from vinyl records that is often mono anyway. Stereo and multichannel makes music more pleasurable to listen, but if the music is bad no amount of channels gonna make it good.
A 1920's wind up gramophone could outperform 1980*s Amstrad junk
DAB is stereo
@@radry100 Standard DAB has rather low bandwidth though, so a lot of radio stations on DAB will opt to use mono audio to allow better overall audio quality. This is not an issue with DAB+ but that's not available everywhere.
Have myself a couple of DTS CD's, Eagles Hell Freezes Over sounds amazing, mixed a few of a friend's songs to 5.1 myself as an experiment and burned to DTS CD, love the format 🥰
and we have gone back to mono, a single bluetooth speaker is enough for the party
It’s worse, there are people who have never played a cd claiming that the LPs they get from target are superior to CDs.
I have a 5.1 system at home and it's a real shame the format really didn't take off.
I have a few DTS surround sound discs that could seen in the video. The sound quality is amazingly good and the surround effect gives the listener a feeling of being 'inside' the music, which I find a very pleasing experience. Better still, I have software where I can create my own DTS 5.1 surround sound discs. The AI stem software around today enables me to create my own 5.1 mixes.
It is a very rewarding and addictive hobby to create 5.1 mixes of records that never existed in 5.1, or create 5.1 mixes out of stems lifted from Mono recordings even! I am only limited by my own imagination of what I can create myself!
I got into the DTS audio CD format after buying my first DVD player, not realising that I already had a CD player with an optical output that could have played such discs a year or so before!
I'm still listening to surround sound music but today it's in the Blu-ray Audio disc format...
I'm really happy that it's becoming more of a trend for new album releases to come with a Dolby Atmos mix on Blu-ray included. Even if it's just a quadrophonic mix masquerading as Atmos, it's such an immersive way to listen to music.
You are right. I had a quad speaker setup in the early 90s (a 6x9 embedded in each top corner of a room and a large old cabinet stereo as a "woofer"). I was constantly frustrated by how little music media actually took advantage of more than just stereo channels. I ended up resorting to weird EQ and panning tricks to make music sound bigger/more-spatial playing on that system. Sadly those tricks usually required "tuning" things per-song for the best results. Most of the time I used only two "channels" with typical stereo panning because of the complexity.
Surround Sound music (SACD/DVD-A/DTS-CD) are my favourite way to experience music other than live-performance.
Some are mixed to give a 'concert hall' ambience whereas others are mixed to play with sound placement and movement.
I still prefer a high end stereo ser up, but I agree that a well mixed surround title on a good AV system is an equally involving, if very different, experience. It's a shame SACD and DVD A titles haven't fallen in price as much as cds, though there are bargains out there. I recently picked up acJapanese SACD of Argos by Wishbone Ash. Works surprisingly well in 5.1
When mixed well I love 5.1 music! Some examples are SACD versions of The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Brothers in Arms. But I've also heard mixes of other albums where the stereo mixes are preferable to the 5.1 mixes.
Steely Dan's "Gaucho" is another album that sounds great in surround sound (I have a DTS version), particularly "Babylon Sisters" and "Hey Nineteen".
I always think you’ve covered them all. Then there’s more!
It never ceases to amaze me how much an aging white man from Wigan will go to such lengths to get to listen to his American gangsta rap in the highest quality possible.
Snoop Dogg and I are the same age and Dr Dre is 60 this year. Unfortunately none of us are getting any younger.
@@Techmoan I love your content although your Music tastes completely elude me. I’m only six years older than you but I would literally rather try and sleep in a running cement mixer then listen to rap. I’m more of a Yes fan.
It’s almost like we’re different people.
@@Techmoancan you make a video about your top 10 rap records of the 80s,90s and 2000s?
Great video John , massive inspiration to us smaller creators.
I didn’t know this was a format .
Thanks for sharing 👍👍👍👍
Love the scene with the CRT TV and the Kenwood speakers and hifi all wedged together, a true "mugs" eyeful, I guess someone knew the TV couldn't be switched on as it would show colour interference from the huge magnets in the Kenwood speakers. I know, I did the same thing with a new 14" Sony TV. Later sets had degaussing with fixed/prevented this problem.
I've just noticed, my Denon AVR-1611 amp has the DTS logo on the front, but I don't own a DVD/CD player, haven't done for decades.
Good to know I wasn't the only person who noticed and wondered about that- I literally just posted a comment above saying that I hoped the speakers were magnetically-shielded!
I have 2 DTS copies of Alan Parsons "On Air." You are absolutely correct on playing the DTS disk using a CD player. There is nothing but noise. So you had to have a player with a DTS decoder. Thanks for the post . Cheers from Indiana 👍.
I remember hearing a Swedish radio station producing test programs in DTS 5.1 around 2004 one featured Tennis being played in your Head I wish i had kept a copy
Radiosporten i P4?
I love these videos about audio formats. My favourite is MiniDisc.
The disc you have in your hand has a fantastic surround recording of "Yesterday" sung by Boyz 2 Men acapella. So wonderful.
Ah! Pete Namlook and his legendary FAX label (ambient genius from the nineties) released twenty or thirty albums in this format in the early 2000s. They were packaged as double discs, the first being normal two track stereo and the second being the same album as DTS 5.1.
Thanks for this information I have never heard off him again thanks
I pick up Namlook's dts discs when they pop up cheap enough on discogs....rarer and rarer now. They are a great example of the potential of the 5.1 medium.
Your shirt is on point Mat.
Thank you for the video Matt. It totally passed me by too. Happy New year from a fellow northerner, looking forward to your new videos this year. 👍🏻💿
My god that reel to reel with the nixie on top is a thing of beauty.
Pioneer RT-909. Fantastic deck
Love the shirt Matt, fits your vibe perfectly.
Swedish National Radio provided DTS downloads of concerts. They sound amazing.
And another superb fun and extremely informative video! Many thanks for your vids TM - I always enjoy them - happy new year!
I picked up my first two of these DTS 5.1 CDs in the last six months. I got the first one as a mistake. I ordered the first one from a Goodwill thrift store via Amazon thinking it was a DVD-A. After that, I purposely got a second one because a favorite album got a 5.1 DTS CD release, and that appears to be the _only_ time it was ever released in a multichannel format. I knew the format existed for several years.
Yes, I remember them and I have one CD DTS 5.1 Shod be played in a DVD player and using a toslink or single coaxial connected direct to the receiver. Thanks 🙏 for the video
Saturday Techmoan is best Techmoan.
Might have to give that a try on my 5.1 set-up! Had no idea. Thanks again :)
I remember these different formats. I worked at Best Buy around 2000 and we had a small section of the different discs and audio equipment. Thanks for sharing!
Another format that I missed out on. Thank god! Great video. Thank you.
Position your speakers in the layout of the four organs of Freiburger Münster and experience a more live-like performance of Bach as Biggs plays them from a single organ console shifting registrations not just from stop to stop but spatially. Spectacular SACD!
Love the shirt. Reminds me we’re probably due for another EQ Visualiser video 😀
That is the best shirt i have ever seen!
+1 for the video description. Kudos to you, Sir.
Still using DTS and PL II daily on my trusty Yamaha 7.1 from '07
And it's becoming even LESS necessary to upgrade to a new AVR since all Streaming Movies are compressed to Dolby Digital, so you don't get any benefit from buying a new top of the line unit capable of playing LOSSLESS TrueHD/DTS-HD formats...
This is my biggest complaint about streaming. I can accept the low bitrate video quality, but I spent a fortune on a nice AVR and installing ATMOS speakers in the ceiling, and now I'm stuck listening to LOSSY COMPRESSED Dolby Digital streams again, like it was 2005!
@@StreetPreacherryou do realize your av receiver has the Dolby surround up mixer right? If you use DSU or dts neural X, you can use all of your speakers including your Dolby Atmos speakers
@@sj7624 Yeah, and streamers are now offering COMPRESSED versions of Dolby Digital Atmos, that includes the processing so you get a similar surround sound mix with height channels. Except the audio streams are all COMPRESSED, and there's no way to get a LOSSLESS 'Dolby TrueHD'/DTS-MA/HD audio stream unless the movie is released on BluRay, and then ATMOS/DTS-X is usually reserved for 4K UHD disks...
And not every movie even gets a physical release these days, and if they do it's usually MONTHS after the movie has been available on Streaming.
@@sj7624 the Dolby access app on windows upmixes Atmos as well, works flawlessly with my older receiver and covers the most compatibility.
That shirt is nothing short of legendary! Love it!!
PS3 is a fantastic multimedia player with DTS playback.
Movies and CDs with DTS sound, sounds very clear and amazing even on average speakers.
What does that have to do with the PS3? Don't you still need to send the signal through an AVR to process the audio stream? Or does the PS3 have a built in DTS decoder with 5.1 speaker jacks?
@@StreetPreacherr Yes, the PS3 has/had a DTS decoder in it (the original fat version). I remember seeing mine decode a DTS 6.1 ES Discrete movie soundtrack off blu-ray and output it as PCM 6.1/7.1 to my AV receiver.
PS3 was a powerhouse for the day. I bought one because I wanted a blu ray player, and the PS3 was cheaper than anything but the cheapest blue ray players. And it saw FARRR more software support than a standard blue ray player.
@@StreetPreacherrps3 was just the player, youd send the signal through and HDMI or digital out to an AV reciever capable of 5.1... just like any other player
@@nicholasmapes Well, yes, except that the PS3 could decode internally the DTS 5.1 (or Dolby TrueHD 5.1 / 7.1) soundtracks to multi channel PCM and output that signal to your AV receiver.
Definitely a channel I always like the video before I even watch it 😂
Hybrid supports also did exist. SACD (basically a DVD) with a layer readable by normal CD players with the stereo version.
SACD isn’t a DVD. It’s called DSD. A lot of multi format players were high end DVD players.
@mikee2923 yep, I know the recoded format is different, I meant that the physical support of SACD is a DVD. It's not a CD, it's not a BD, and they didn't invent another support for SACD, it is really a DVD and some had a real CD layer, not just a DVD layer with 44-16 PCM audio: I played it in a normal CD player.
Just downloaded a few dts cd albums using Pirate Bay and YES they do sound awesome! Thanks for the vid Matt!!!!
DTS CD, DVD Audio, SACD, Blu-ray Audio. It's a shame that multichannel music never broke through. Hell, even stereo is dull now in comparison to the 1970s. I'm still very happy with my upgraded 7.1 setup for movies, music and gaming. Once you experience it you never want to go back.
Agree to disagree, there is a simplicity in a clean stereo mix that I enjoy as much as the rest of the equipment without dipping toes in multichannel. I do use spacial sound on headphones occasionally but it is hard to nail down some details afterwards with something as modern as we get.
A well-engineered stereo record through good speakers can give you fully three-dimensional sound. You just won't be inside it - until you put on headphones.
@@Spearca I wouldn't want to be inside of a recording anyways, bands play at a crowd, not an individual. Stereo or 2.1 just makes more sense for music tbh
@@ThePokemon12149No, bands in recording studios play at an individual sitting at a mixing board between a pair of stereo speakers.
SACD has a niche and is still pressed, atleast for select albums.
Having (relatively recently) moved into my own place and getting an Atmos setup (albeit a sound bar… with real tears!) I’ve gotten into surround music. DTS CDs are a very interesting format. Worth mentioning that anyone can *burn* a DTS CD, it burns as a standard audio track as to any CD. The jam band community has taken advantage of this to mix certain Grateful Dead (and adjacent bands) and Phish shows in DTS 5.1, usually with the Soundboard recording using the fronts, the Audience recording using the rears, and the vocals and bass mux’d together to the center and sub respectively. The result is a surprisingly effective “as if you were there” concert mix that sounds crystal clear up front (in the stage) and gives you crowd/room ambience in the rears
Today there is mass production for single smartphone speakers. 😆 I've noticed that fewer and fewer people around me are interested in surround sound. Just as 3D TVs have disappeared again, surround sound for the home is also likely to slip into a fringe group. Most people buy a soundbar, sometimes with a subwoofer, and that's it. Or are you observing something else?
I've noticed the same. Gen Z in particular aren't remotely interested in audio quality. The upside being that the old AV receivers and home cinema systems from 15-20 years ago can now be picked up for pennies because folk don't like having visible speaker wires. (I never understood the 3D fad - it just gave me a migraine, esoecially on small screens.)
I've been trying to sell my friends on surround sound for ages. When they come over to my house and hear it they're blown away but then when I offer to set one up for them because I've found them for so cheap they become disinterested. Who wouldn't want better sound for literally pennies on the dollar?! (Angry Millennial here)
@@jrand2148 WAF - Wife Approval Factor ia a big issue haha... Sometimes they like the sound but not the boxes and cables that come with it 🙂
Sound bars have already killed surround sound 5.1
I bought a surround sound and 1080p TV as soon as they came out and rarely enjoyed real high quality surround in movies. Same with music - everything is stereo to 4 speakers. You really have to push yourself to to get the best dvds and blurays and high quality satelite and cable and buy special 5.1 music to ever get your moneys worth out of those back speakers. Companies are just not investing money and time into making high quality sound. Even now with the next big thing in Dolby ceiling speakers and 4k bluray object oriented sound you can easily buy a disk to only realise that the sound is garbage compared to what is suposed to be. The investment is really not worth it for young people who have streaming musing on phones and netflix to go buy a 5000 dollar equipment to get a whoompf out of their 5 favourite movies and songs. First companies need to be held to a higher standard, lower standards must be penalised, so companies dont default to them, then hardware and licensed content needs to go down in price and more mainstream to get everyone to stop buyng cheaper "surround" sound solutions.
Even in mobile devices - phones with one audio speaker and no audio jacks should be unacceptable. Mobile devices CAN and should have surround sound speakers, high quality dacs and jacks for headphones. Companies just go with the cheapest option because they can use the money to slap 5 cameras in the back to make people buy their phone this year. Its ridiculous.
Having said all this... there seems to be a Gen Z interest in Atmos and Samsung is just about to launch their new Glasses Free 3d gaming monitor at 27" for the same age group
Same here, I never got in touch with the format or even the information about it. Great find, great report 🙂Happy new year!
I guess I was one of those "enthusiasts" back in the late 90s and I had (and still have) seven of those DTS Music Discs. The first one I spotted was Alan Parsons "On Air", which was one of the launch titles of that format and being an avid fan of Alan Parsons and the late Eric Wollfson I spent about 70 Deutsche Mark for it back then (as far as I can remember, might have been even more). If you take the historic inflation into account, that's about 55 Euro today and thereby much more than the 1.99 Pound price tag on Matt's disc 😄). By the way it was sold in a standard Jewel Case back then (like all "normal" CDs) and I am pretty sure that decision made it even harder to sell them, because people would have flipped though the shelves at their preferred store and thought: why pay so much extra for a regular CD?!? All other discs that I bought later had this "DVD Audio" packaging - so I guess they quickly learned that they need to differentiate not just by sound quality but as well in terms of optics 😉)
I anyone is interested: my current DTS Audio CD catalogue contains of:
- Alan Parsons - On Air (1996)
- The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over (1997)
- Diana Krall - Love Scenes (1998)
- Sting - Brand New Day (1999)
- Sting - Ten Summoner's Tales (1999)
- Don Henley - The End Of The Innocence (2000)
- The Police - Every Breath You Take (2000)
Especially Alan Parsons and the Eagles just blew me away on my 5.1 System back then 🙂
I still love them all and enjoy them from time to time.
Crumbs it takes me back to my visit to "Live 95" consumer electronics show in Earls Court where DTS was "the thing" back then. Bought a Kenwood Sub Woofer SW500 there which we still own and use today and makes it 30yrs old this year, considering its left switched on 24/7 I am amazed its still working, although back then Kenwood built some decent stuff. It must be one of the longest owned bits of electronic kit that I have thats still being used today.
My wife's 2004 Acura TL played DTS Audio, so I picked up a few discs. Some DVD players also played the format. I still play them occasionally on the DVD player (the Acura is long gone). I really like the sound. The discs were crazy expensive a few years ago ($75 range), but I just checked and they seem to have lost their collector's appeal.
now it'll go back up for a bit thanks to this video as what usually happens
I’ve had that gen Acura and totally remember seeing the DTS logo there now. Man that car had such a stacked entertainment tech package.
I had a 5.1 Sony DTS amp that I used with a DLP projector in the late 90s. When the amp died and DLP bulbs became the cost of a new TV, I never felt a need to replace that setup to have the same experience. The tech that goes into re-creating positional audio with only a 2-channel stream on headphones has advanced to the point to where it's close enough.
PlayStation 2 had a lot to do with putting the DVD format in homes. It was an either all in one machine, or in many cases, cheaper than stand alone players at the time.
I've been told otherwise, that the PS2 was avoided for DVD playback because it would break down faster.
Nah DVD players were cheap as chips in the UK. No-one would ever think of going to the expense of getting a PS2 and think ooo I've got a DVD player too 😂
I remember those times, talking about PS2 it was very often mentioned it's the cheapest option to get a DVD player (AND you got a game console). I am not sure if that was completely true, but PS2 still stays at the first place of best selling game consoles of all time.
I think the fact VHS sucked had more to do with it
DVDs £20 each at first (£37 in today’s money). Pretty expensive so having a PS2 didn’t guarantee people would but the discs.
DTS's cinema system was similarly proprietary - proprietary sound readers for the projectors (which only read timecode off of the films), and then a special box to decode and play back the DTS audio which was distributed on CDs and DVDs (and now USB for modern 70mm releases). Its incredibly finicky but sticks around since it superseded 70mm stereo magnetic.
Loving your shirt!
In my country the earliest multi channel experiment was over the radio: one stereo receiver is at the front receiving station "A" while the other stereo receiver is behind the listener receiving station "B", creating a four channel experimental sound stage. Because usually peoples not had more than one stereo receiver at home, this experiment was stopped after just a few times.
We live in an age now where most people don’t even have a stereo music system. They play their music either just on their headphones or at best a mono Bluetooth speaker (albeit one that probably sounds pretty good).
Phone speaker though..
@ yeah 🤦♂️
Connecting two identical mono Bluetooth speakers to each other via Bluetooth can make the speakers assume the identities of two pure L/R stereo speakers, which improves the sound quality a lot. Best of all, the young person will readily accept the second speaker because it is their favourite model they decided to acquire in the first place. For further details, please watch a Techmoan video titled:
Are two B&O A1 speakers more than twice as good as one?
I used to work at a cinema. Before everything went digital there was different ways to deliver dts and dolby digital surround sound for the movies. One of the ways was actually media like this. :) There was a 4U rack decoder system that handled the different systems that itself was 2U devices - one for each type.
Fascinating break down on the DTS format
Thanks for another great video, Mat. Today’s my birthday and I must admit as soon as I learned it would be on a Saturday this year, I was looking forward to seeing a fresh episode of techmoan 🎉
I have The Steve Miller Band Fly Like an Eagle DTS disk. It sounds Awesome on my home theatre.
Interesting format. Don't think I've ever heard of it really. I'm jealous of your Pioneer reel to reel tape, and the nixie clock.
YES. one of my favorite format ever. I hoped you'd cover it someday and that day has finally come.
Pete Namlook, one of my favorites artists, had produced over 40 DTS-CDs on his label. My dream would be to collect them all one day, but they were limited editions that are next to impossible to find nowdays.
I *think* I have all of the Namlook DTS releases. I was a bit of a completist with his stuff. IIRC he started releasing them around 2005, and then every album after that got the 5.1 DTS treatment. The only problem was that the double pack CD/dtsCD were over £20 each. But, Pete Namlook was releasing dts titles right up until his untimely death in 2012, so well after the timeframe covered in this video.
@gardenshedstudios dang. I'd like to see pictures of that, must be pretty huge. Have you also ripped them all? there's some that i haven't even found anywhere on the internet.
@@ora2j251 I've just counted the dts discs in my collection. There were 29 individual albums and four "ambient gardner" compilations released in the format, I still occasionally take a trip down memory lane and listen to them on my Blu-Ray home cinema system.
Your video's always makes me happy!
Classic Techmoan - Loved this one, really interesting 🙂
Man I used to love these I miss them so much. They were so great for electronic music. I used to listen with a magnepan surround system. So unbelievable! Yes I had five magnepan speakers surrounding me 😊
Great shirt.
First thing I ever had on DTS was Galaxy Quest. I was so excited to see the blue DTS decoder light on my brand new setup turn on.
Never knew it came out this early, very cool video!
(I'm still a DTS fan, I really like my current DTS 5.1 setup)