AVForums Podcast: DTS:X Interview - podcast discussion

Phil Hinton

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In this special edition of the AVForums Podcast we interview Dave Casey, Senior Director of Product Development at DTS Inc. to talk about their new immersive sound format DTS:X

Presented by Phil Hinton with Steve Withers

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Time: 00:20:53 | File Size: 29mb | Direct Link
 
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Great to hear someone on AVForums who isn't all doom and gloom about Bluray :)
 
Interesting podcast guys as always at least it has clarified a few points. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on future podcasts and reading the reviews when the processors finally hit the market.
 
He mentioned it was object based and not based on speaker configurations like (stereo, 7.1 etc) but what is the difference between DTS Headphone X and DTS X? This just confuses me as I thought DTS X is dynamic regardless of speaker placement or format but your guest said for a 3D soundscape you need 5.1 plus 2 ceiling speakers as minimum.

Additionally does DTS Headphone X work with regular studio monitor stereo (2ch configuration) headphones or does it rely on 5.1/7.1 headphones which for gaming and music enthusiasts are not very popular compared to our Fostex, AKG, Sennheiser, Denon, Beyerdynamic, Philips etc alternatives.

Interesting Podcast nevertheless. Thanks
 
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DTS:X claim that they could create an immersive sound field using just two speakers, which is presumably how the headphone version works with just a normal pair of stereo headphones, but I think to realistically produce a 3D hemisphere in a room you would need at least some height speakers. Interestingly in demos of the home version of DTS:X that DTS have been doing, they've been using a 7.1.4 configuration, which is good news for those of us with a Dolby Atmos setup.
 
Thanks for the infocast. Sales and Marketing from DTS undoubtedly but interesting and informative nevertheless.

So it appears DTS:X can provide an immersive sound field for those of us who have the benefit of more than one speaker. I expect DTS:X will be included with most AV processors within the year and will provide a "solution" with whatever speakers are available.

And at the upper end? I suppose if one is willing to have 32 speakers it will be possible to enjoy all 3 sound formats with a certain amount of compromise in the not to distant future. Optimum speaker placement should give the custom install business some upgrade opportunities and lessons will be learnt and information will trickle down.

4k and immersive sound.. we live in interesting AV times.
 
Too bad the interviewers didn't try to peg DTS's Dave Casey down to more specifics, so that we can really see if DTS:X has anything above and beyond what Dolby Atmos brings to the table. That is especially relevant because both DTS and Dolby will be at the mercy of Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo, etc. and their severely limited mainstream equipment. They're basically continuing to shoe-horn in 3D audio to their old fashioned 9.1 and 11.1 receiver and pre-amp platforms with little to no speaker layout wiggle room.

Not everyone can afford a Trinnov Altitude or Datasat or Steinway/Lyngdorf to get 16 to 32 rendered speaker outputs for DTS:X and Dolby Atmos, but I would like to know if DTS (as well as Dolby) will be able to coax these manufacturers to at least give us 13.1 or even 15.1 rendering at a more "reasonable" price, so you can have 9.1.4, 11.1.4, or 9.1.6 configurations. It's amazing how many people have expressed concern that they cannot use four overheads and have their front wide speakers work at the same time (9.1.2) or have a more precise 3D surround scape when they have a dedicated room. The more speakers you have, the better these immersive formats sound.

Also, we know that Dolby Atmos for the home can render to a 24.1.10 configuration and use, according to their white papers, all of the 128 possible objects from the cinema mix using seemingly lossless spatial coding within the Dolby TrueHD extension. DTS mentioned 32 positions for consumer DTS:X (at CES), but how many objects can they handle and how are the objects used in the DTS Master Audio backwards compatible codec? To me, it sounds like it's a very similar 7.1 channel bed with object/metadata file extension, which, like Atmos, is not a fully object based format, but a hybrid concept.

Also, is DTS:X for the home encoded as a true lossless signal or if it's a particularly complex object mix does it switch over to being lossy compressed?
 
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There is still the question of how this is actually going to work in practice. Just answering its down to the manufactories to work out where the speakers are placed is a bit of a non-answer, surely they must have worked with them to come up with solutions.

My money is on non-pro receivers having a set of speaker layouts to choice from, most likely atmos and auro layouts.

A truly customise setup, would probably result in a huge improvement in sound for most normal rooms where things can't be setup perfectly, but I can't see it happening.

There is also the question of space and how much bigger the sound files will be to handle the extra data. Will we start seeing BD discs with lossy soundtracks to make room for this.
 
You would think that it would be possible to have a sort of autocad software on a pc to build the room (just basic shape and positioning of the speakers), and then utilising the pc's horse power make this into something the receiver could handle with its much less powerful cpu, but clearly that won't happen.
 
Fella was keen to emphasise the progression so hopefully we won't have compression to cope with the data. Maybe we could have the 12" disc format discussed in this weeks podcast ? Then plenty of room for extra data I would guess !

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