DTS 5.1 CD - I missed this one
Added 2025-01-02 18:20:11 +0000 UTCHere’s a format that I either missed or I forgot about - I suspect it’s the former, but I can’t remember.
I might be twenty five years too late but I’m finally up to speed on this now, so let me share everything I now know about the DTS 5.1 Music Disc before this all goes out of my head.
https://youtu.be/ECp8cAJUVSc
Many thanks to Brad for the video suggestion.
I'd best wish everyone a belated Happy New Year. My apologies if I haven't responded to any messages. I really just wanted to get this video completed before going though my emails etc - hopefully there’s nothing urgent in there.
Take care.
Comments
Could be, they use that technology also for multilayer DVDs
MrHammond
2025-01-09 18:25:40 +0000 UTCI have (now unused) a hd-dvd player add-on for the Xbox 360 and some of those discs were hybrids with hd-dvd and standard dvd on. I wonder if that was achieved using the sort of translucent layer that you're describing?
Simon Arnold
2025-01-07 22:58:07 +0000 UTCJust seen a link to video posted on a laserdisc forum on Facebook, they appreciated it (lasedisc forever)
Retro Nick
2025-01-06 23:05:45 +0000 UTCYes there's quite a few more - some that people are familiar with, some not so much...and probably quite a few more I've forgotten.
Techmoan
2025-01-06 15:50:52 +0000 UTCI'm convinced you still have a handful of unique formats up your sleeve that you clearly remember. 😉
Grace Robbins
2025-01-06 15:44:17 +0000 UTCYou don’t get shows like that any more. CES this year is all old tech but ’Now with added AI’
Techmoan
2025-01-06 09:40:44 +0000 UTCAt the 1996 CES, I bought the Millennium DTS decoder from Alan Parsons. Yes, that Alan Parsons. He was a backer of the format, and he was in their room at CES doing demos of both his album "On Air" as well as other people's music. They had a surround system using 4 Carver Amazing Loudspeakers (a lot of the content was actually quad). They were selling the decoder and the launch discs in their room, which is very unusual for a trade show. In addition to the decoder, I got Marvin Gaye, Pavarotti & Friends, and of course Alan's album. Alan brought the stuff to the counter to have the assistant ring up. I used the Millennium decoder through the 5.1 analog inputs of the legendary Pioneer VSX-D1S receiver, daisy-chained with the Yamaha DDP-1 Dolby Digital decoder (the version with AC-3 RF input for laserdisc). The Millennium decoder had 5.1 analog inputs and a bypass mode, designed to pass through a Dolby decoder so you could have both formats.
GadgetBlues
2025-01-06 08:54:27 +0000 UTCA curious gap and probably also niche format! I know that DTS decoders were even not that common in DVD players, they could only pass it through to the digital output. I guess also it is not a format aimed at audiophiles, as the sound is highly compressed to put 6 channels in place of 2. BTW: you can quite easily see the difference between a CD and DVD: the silver layer in a CD is on top (text on top, if the silver layer is visible, has no shadows, as in The Police CD), in the DVD it is somewhere in the middle (with the Fleedwood Mac DVD, you see the shadows of the text). I'm not sure if it might also be possible to create a hybrid disc where the DVD layer is translucent enough for a CD layer to shine through (and focussing of the player's lens blends out the other layer)
MrHammond
2025-01-05 13:04:06 +0000 UTCThat’s the decoder/transmitter for the Sony 9.1 surround headphones. https://youtu.be/unfJahrvtuU
Techmoan
2025-01-04 20:22:48 +0000 UTCWhat's the name of the Sony DTS decoder that you are using? I've been looking for just that product!
trainboy
2025-01-04 18:38:42 +0000 UTCYikes! Some of the Sony 4K Blu-ray players could handle SACD. Some are still available as new old stock. I guess anyone who is interested in checking out SACD should grab one of those while they are still available.
Brad Hood
2025-01-04 14:38:15 +0000 UTCI didn't realize the timing on DTS...I didn't get a DTS AV receiver until 2011, when my previous Dolby Pro one died. I have a collection of DTS laserdiscs, and I didn't realize how late in their life they came out.
Mike in Texas
2025-01-04 12:28:36 +0000 UTCBrilliant, thanks Matt.
Lee Coles
2025-01-04 11:25:37 +0000 UTCPerhaps I should try and play around with finding out how resilient the DTS audio signal is. I suspect , not at all.
Techmoan
2025-01-04 10:57:44 +0000 UTCI think the most affordable new SACD player is the Shanling SCD1.3 at around £1000.
Techmoan
2025-01-04 10:41:29 +0000 UTCThanks!
Big Car
2025-01-04 08:25:02 +0000 UTCSACD is still a going concern, believe it or not. Among some other specialty labels, Mobile Fidelity puts out remasters of classic albums on SACD on a regular basis. There are still some titles coming out of Japan as well. It is getting harder to find an affordable player. Most of the ones still in production are from high end audio brands.
Brad Hood
2025-01-04 07:54:49 +0000 UTCWow! Those 17 minutes went by fast. Thanks Matt for another great video.
Peter Jensen
2025-01-04 06:32:12 +0000 UTCI already did a decade ago -- see my "Beyond Stereo: 3D, Quadraphonic & Surround Sound" video from 2014.
VWestlife
2025-01-04 04:41:41 +0000 UTCWonder if you’ll get a content match if you play the digital file in CD mode for too long… or perhaps, is this a new way of “sharing”music? Can we decode it via the audio signal?
Ant Wakefield
2025-01-04 04:18:04 +0000 UTCI have found a very small number of DTS cds. I think they're neat. It never occurred to me that they might work in a DVD player... I just use the optical out on my discman with my receiver and it just works.
Jacob Nelson
2025-01-04 01:32:42 +0000 UTCIt's in stock, in my size, and twenty quid. Plus another twenty postage. Don't care though, I ordered it. Thanks!
Adam Francis Smith
2025-01-03 23:38:03 +0000 UTCThe quantizer definitely has a hard time with Mat's wallpaper at 15:29.
Tunix
2025-01-03 23:24:35 +0000 UTCUnfortunately it doesn't seem to be playing too well with YouTube's video compression.
VWestlife
2025-01-03 22:58:45 +0000 UTCIt’s a DoubleTwo shirt, and while I didn’t get it direct, I’ve just had a look and it’s on their website https://www.doubletwo.co.uk/shirts/ranges/long-sleeve-shirts?colour=164
Techmoan
2025-01-03 22:04:45 +0000 UTCNice Simon. That was a blast from the past. Shame I didn't have my ghettoblaster to try it on.
Big Car
2025-01-03 21:58:53 +0000 UTCBloody hell, now I've got VWestlife responding to my message. C'mon - one of you has to do a video about this! 😉 Seriously, thanks. That one's been bugging me for decades.
Big Car
2025-01-03 21:49:01 +0000 UTCI was aware of DTS CDs existing due to seeing them being mentioned in audio and electronics magazines in the '90s, but I never had the necessary equipment to play them (nor desire to purchase it), nor have I ever knowingly seen one out in the wild among the used CDs at record stores, thrift stores, yard sales, etc.
VWestlife
2025-01-03 21:45:11 +0000 UTCIn addition to QSound, two other methods of creating "3D stereo" that were popular in the late '80s and early '90s were B.A.S.E. (Bedini Audio Spacial Environment) and RSS (Roland Sound Space). And then there were some CDs that were Dolby Pro Logic surround sound encoded, just like many movies on VHS tape were.
VWestlife
2025-01-03 21:43:29 +0000 UTCMat, that's one of the all time greatest shirts I've ever seen, and I want one. Where did you get it?
Adam Francis Smith
2025-01-03 19:39:07 +0000 UTCI know of and own several SACD/DVD Audio discs, but never DTS CDs. Also in these comments, I never heard of QSound (so of course I had to order one on eBay). I own a couple Quadro Blu-ray Discs but never got around setting this up since it requires a special Blu-ray player. BTW, I really enjoyed your quadraphonic video many, many years ago. You would think by now we would have BT in 4.0 or even 5.1 formats, along with a streaming service that would support this.
Rudy Rodriguez
2025-01-03 15:41:14 +0000 UTChttps://youtu.be/0jxW6nJ88AQ?si=8DLgq6nutNs5tKMn
Simon Arnold
2025-01-03 15:03:37 +0000 UTCIt was a feature on Tomorrow's World with a Radio 1 concurrent transmission of the music in stereo with the surround effect. I don't have the right setup with me but I did find this recording from the radio. https://soundcloud.com/annabeep/3d-stereo-tomorrows-world-side2
Simon Arnold
2025-01-03 13:47:17 +0000 UTCI remember going into our local Powerhouse store about 99/2000 and a chap did a demo of this, they had a chair you sat in in the middle the properly arranged speakers, sounded OK, but wasn't how you'd expected to hear music, sounded bit like the members of the band were social distancing and not together on a stage.
Tim Barker
2025-01-03 11:38:40 +0000 UTCSACD will get its own video one day. It was a bit too complicated to drop anything in about it here, as I needed to check on a few dates first.
Techmoan
2025-01-03 10:30:10 +0000 UTCIt might be interesting to know in the video where SACD fits in? Or SACD probably deserves its own video (apologies if you’re already done one and I’ve forgotten! haha) Great video, anyway! :)
James Gould
2025-01-03 10:10:52 +0000 UTCI got it wrong Matthew - the Marc Almond album was 1991.
Big Car
2025-01-03 09:15:45 +0000 UTCAny digital content distribution platform that doesn't allow you to download a DRM-free copy of the content you purchased isn't worthy of your money.
Matt Whitlock
2025-01-03 03:34:59 +0000 UTCSACD is actually better than DTS because it's lossless, although it uses a fundamentally different digitization technique and thus cannot be losslessly converted to the PCM samples that most DACs require. However, even after a lossy conversion to PCM, it's still going to be closer to the uncompressed studio master than lossy DTS. That said, you'd really need to have God's own ears to hear a difference. Does your brother have "Dark Side of the Moon" in a multi-channel format? I have both the 1973 Alan Parsons quadrophonic mix and the 2003 James Guthrie 5.1-channel mix, and they each have their pros and cons, so I listen to both of them. It's so fun to hear the parts bouncing and swirling around the room. I sure wish more good music had been mastered in multi-channel, but I guess multi-channel doesn't make a lick of difference to radio stations, and that's where all the money is, so we audiophiles are left out in the cold most of the time. Alas.
Matt Whitlock
2025-01-03 03:27:46 +0000 UTCWell, every little thing they do is magic.
Brad Jones
2025-01-03 01:08:53 +0000 UTCDidn't all copies have that? Must check mine. Vaguely recall seeing something on the insert.
Brad Jones
2025-01-03 01:06:58 +0000 UTCNot in the 80s, because the first QSound album was in 1991 (Madonna, The Immaculate Collection).
Matthew Hunt
2025-01-03 00:54:53 +0000 UTCIn the equally small window of SACD (which I can only assume is similar if not identical to DTS) I listened to Wish You Where Here on my brother's setup and was AMAZED at how it sounded. But you need the system many are not willing to purchase- me included.
Andrew Shaw
2025-01-03 00:33:34 +0000 UTC"Movies on a disc?!" (Mat's former colleague.)
Brad Jones
2025-01-03 00:02:12 +0000 UTCThat must be it. I seem to recall these were done in another solution, or maybe even QSound, but because they didn't want to pay the licensing fee, they didn't advertise it. Who knows. It was a long time ago.
Big Car
2025-01-02 23:40:39 +0000 UTCBomb The Bass - Winter In July?
Simon Arnold
2025-01-02 23:26:09 +0000 UTCCould this be QSound?
Techmoan
2025-01-02 23:24:09 +0000 UTCI recall I was told that there were some CDs in the 80s that were specially "spatially encoded" so they sounded "wider". And they could be played on any setup. I seem to recall a Jean-Michel Jarre CD (probably "Revolutions") and also Marc Almond's Tenement Symphony. And I swore I could hear a difference, particularly on the Marc Almond last track "My Hand Over My Heart" when the sound kicks up at the start (0:19). All on my amp with 4 speakers. Is there any truth to this, or is it "all in the mind, you know"? I can't find any info about it on the web, so maybe I'm answering my own question...
Big Car
2025-01-02 23:06:52 +0000 UTCI own your Police compilation on SACD. I always wondered how the heck they managed to put that horrible, horrible "updated" version of De Do Do Do on the 5.1 layer only - the 2.0 layer mercifully plays the good old version from Zenyatta. Now I know, thanks to the review you found on Wayback Machine. It was probably easier to make a convincing surround version out of all the plastic synths on the "update" than from the rather sparsely arranged original, but still... It probably didn't help the DTS-CD format any.
Oscar Røhling
2025-01-02 23:03:31 +0000 UTCOne might get the impression that whenever a physical format requires an add-on, like the external DTS decoder, it is pretty much doomed from the start.
Tunix
2025-01-02 22:51:44 +0000 UTCBesides, streaming services come with various limitations. The companies behind them track your media consumption to gather insights for monetization purposes. Furthermore, you don’t truly own your library, and it’s up to them to decide how, when, and where (geoblocking) you can access your content. Plus, there’s no certainty if and under what terms a particular service will still be available in ten or so years.
Tunix
2025-01-02 22:32:13 +0000 UTCHappy new year Mat, FYI: „Scooter“ released a CD in 2003 that in addition to it’s three audio tracks contained one DTS encoded song as well: https://www.discogs.com/de/release/436142-Scooter-Weekend
Michael Markus
2025-01-02 21:09:35 +0000 UTCThanks for the clarification
Scott Call
2025-01-02 21:08:33 +0000 UTCDAB(+) operates on a different frequency band (VHF III) and runs independently alongside traditional FM broadcasts.
Tunix
2025-01-02 21:07:49 +0000 UTCThe great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from :-)
Duncan
2025-01-02 21:03:26 +0000 UTCI'm not sure HD Radio supports more than 2 channel sound. It's somehow attached to the analog FM frequency and doesn't replace the analog signal like I believe DAB did?
Scott Call
2025-01-02 20:53:14 +0000 UTCDAB+ supports an optional extension called MPEG Surround, which adds spatial audio data as a side channel alongside the AAC-encoded stereo audio stream, from which the additional audio channels are reconstructed. That said, I’ve yet to come across a DAB Surround transmission in the wild.
Tunix
2025-01-02 20:50:52 +0000 UTCOh cool! I had no idea there were actual music audio DTS CDs! It's actually quite timely that you've brought up DTS 5.1 because a few months ago, I had started helping out at the 35mm cinema in town (Revival House Perth!) and out projectionist has installed Sony Dynamic Digital Sound (SDDS) and DTS readers and processors for the film projector... and I can spool together a film through it! :) We have a good number of films that have DTS time codes on them (I have some scrap film next to me that have all the audio formats printed on the edges too) and the DTS soundtracks are normally offloaded from the DTS master discs onto the server and will play for the matching 35mm films. Quite fascinating old tech!
antzpantz
2025-01-02 20:47:24 +0000 UTCHappy new year Mat - and all. I know you hate this phrase, but that was a classic Techmoan.
Andrew Torrance
2025-01-02 20:32:23 +0000 UTCInteresting video. A format I personally had not heard of before.
Gideon Jones-Davies
2025-01-02 20:21:59 +0000 UTCIf physical media did die off (which I personally don't want) that would mean the public has totally embraced steaming which is lower quality and I fear would only ensure only lower quality product available to the public. If however people keep buying physical media because they want higher quality than that tells the studios what they should be providing.
Gideon Jones-Davies
2025-01-02 20:21:36 +0000 UTCI remember those and the good thing was you could burn your own dts 5.1 CDs at home if you had 5.1 dts material. I still have some selfburned CDs laying around here. What memories <3
ElPlagiato
2025-01-02 20:00:48 +0000 UTCNice. I was wondering what the dolby 5.1 player on my -01 volvo was for. Never heard of audio DVDs but now I know. Thanks. I guess this means if I wanted I could seek out some of those and play them in my car. And yes that means these things did get in to cars too it seems.
J Ruonti
2025-01-02 19:52:32 +0000 UTCUnrelated, kinda, but I'm really hoping as Blu-rays die off that streaming options start really upping the audio quality and stop degrading everything 640kb for the entire audio stream. The difference between streaming audio and TrueHD is massive if you have a good sound setup - it's something even regular people can hear pretty easily. At least with streaming audio, it took forever, but at least we're getting good high quality audio. But still, DVD-Audio when it appeared, was really impressive. I had a Cadillac CTS at the time and they had a Bose 11.1 setup I believe, but whatever the channels were, things sounded amazing inside that car (yes Bose haters, they do make good stuff from time to time).
Chris Munch
2025-01-02 19:42:21 +0000 UTCOne of the early perceived advantages of DTS over DD was the DD encoding on films topped out,I think, at 384k due to the position they choose to encode it into the film. DTS on the other hand used CD rates (~1.5 Mbps) and could in theory be less lossless. For a film, a 2 channel mix would be a single CD rom and 6 channel would be two discs (the DTS decoder was a rack mount PC with two drives) When it came to laserdiscs, since they only had two audio tracks, analog and digital, they had to be either/or for DTS and Dolby Digital. On DTS discs, the stereo (or dolby surround) track was on the digital track and the Dolby Digital track was encoded into the analog audio track. DTS was the reverse, 2 channels of analog audio and. The DTS on the digital track. Since you needed at least one standard 2 track audio, you couldn't shove both DD and DTS onto the same disc. When DVD came out, it required either a DD or PCM soundtrack with DTS being optional. DTS was never a huge player at home. Apropos of nothing else, in the US we have "HD Radio" instead of DAB and I don't know the details of the encoding but when listening in the car, a DTS logo is prominent in the screen.
Scott Call
2025-01-02 19:27:12 +0000 UTCI can play DTS CDs using my Sony CD player from the 90’s. I have an optical connection to a modern Denon receiver for the DTS decoding. The Sony has a built in headphone jack, and I just hear the white noise if I connect headphones to it.
Brad Hood
2025-01-02 19:21:14 +0000 UTCRegarding the difference between a CD and DVD the reflective layer on a DVD is sandwiched between two layers of polycarbonate while on CDs the reflective layer is under the label. If you look at the side of the disc you can tell which is which. The DVD has what looks like a line through it.
Martipar
2025-01-02 19:19:45 +0000 UTCI have a few DTS CDs and I was able to convert them to 5.1 FLAC. I ripped the CD to WAV files and then used this website (https://convertio.co) to covert from stereo WAV to 5.1 WAV. For whatever reason, it automatically does the DTS decoding in the background. I then used XLD to covert to 5.1 FLAC. I can play them back through Roon, which will downmix from 5.1 to stereo for headphone listening.
Brad Hood
2025-01-02 19:16:35 +0000 UTCFormat, format, who's got the format. Just think of the millions of dollars that were wasted on these formats. The late 90s and the 2000s were a wild time for tech, (I'm thinking of the dot com boom and bust.) At the time we were thinking there wasn't anything a new format couldn't do. I can't imagine anyone thinking a CD that sounded like trying to get on AOL would be a hit.
CrimsonPig808
2025-01-02 18:58:04 +0000 UTCI’m sort of fascinated with these DTS formats, because it seems like they were all designed to be retrofit into existing stereo PCM standards under the radar. Even today, the core DTS track of a DTS-X or DTS Master Audio track for Blu-ray defaults to 1536 kbps, the exact same as 16-bit PCM stereo. I wonder how easy it would be to transcode one of these CDs to a modern format.
Justin Sevakis
2025-01-02 18:55:09 +0000 UTCI'm clearly one of the people you are talking about. I have a number of DTS CDs from the '90s that I used to play on my Pioneer CLD-515 laserdisc that was modified to output DTS from DTS laserdiscs into a Yamaha DSP-A2 amp (both laserdisc and amp now gone) The CDs I still have are: both demo discs you showed along with another from Telarc, Every Breath You Take - Police, Mavericks - Trampoline, Titanic Soundtrack, Sting - Summoner's Tales, Sting - Brand New Day. Note all are in CD cases, not DVD-Audio cases. Interestingly they don't play on my current Panasonic 4k UHD Blu-Ray player (They do play, but no digital stream appears to go out on the HDMI). I may need to try the optical output.
Ian Fitter
2025-01-02 18:52:23 +0000 UTCIt’s a DoubleTwo shirt, and while I didn’t get it direct, I’ve just had a look and it’s on their website https://www.doubletwo.co.uk/shirts/ranges/long-sleeve-shirts?colour=164
Techmoan
2025-01-02 18:47:36 +0000 UTCGood to hear your voice has recovered. Maybe a weird question: Where the heck did you get that shirt? :-)
Maik Bryant
2025-01-02 18:44:18 +0000 UTCFor a short period of time, I want to say early 2000s Swedish radio produced dts 5.1 radio plays and selected classical music recordings as wave files that they offered on their website for download. I downloaded them and that was a good thing because those high quality productions are no longer available!
Sina Farhat
2025-01-02 18:40:07 +0000 UTC"Here’s a format that I either missed or I forgot about - I suspect it’s the former, but I can’t remember." That gave me a good chuckle 😁
Richard M
2025-01-02 18:25:58 +0000 UTC
