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High Definition Audio

There are several HD Audio formats available and at this time the only way to enjoy these is via a Blu Ray player, these formats can then be passed to a capable AV AMP, such as the top selling Onkyo SR507.

Dolby Digital Plus: Like standard Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus uses lossy compression to shrink the size of the audio information. However, it outdoes standard Dolby Digital by supporting a higher bit rate (6.144Mbps vs. 40Kbps) and more channels (7.1 vs. 5.1).

Dolby TrueHD: The major innovation of Dolby TrueHD is that is uses lossless compression. That means it’s still able to compress the raw information to a smaller file size, but it does so without throwing away any information. It offers both a higher bit rate and sample rate than Dolby Digital Plus, to produce overall audio quality that’s theoretically identical to the studio master. That also means it should sound identical to a DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack, which also uses lossless compression.

DTS-HD High Resolution: DTS-HD High Resolution is the step-up over standard DTS, and also uses lossy compression to shrink the size of the audio information. It outdoes standard DTS by supporting a higher bit rate (6Mbps vs. 1.5Mpbs), higher sample rate (96Khz vs. 48Khz), and more channels (7.1 vs. 5.1).

DTS-HD Master Audio: Like Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio uses lossless compression. It offers a higher bit rate than DTS-HD High Resolution, for overall audio quality that’s, again, theoretically identical to the studio master. It should sound identical to a Dolby TrueHD soundtrack.

Linear PCM (LPCM): Linear PCM forms the foundation of all of these soundtrack formats. It’s like the language all your home theater digital audio components speak. No matter what soundtrack format is used, it’s eventually converted to linear PCM so your AV receiver can play it back. Some Blu-ray movies actually include soundtracks in linear PCM mode, which has some advantages–it’s high quality and compatible with every Blu-ray player on the market. The downside is that LPCM takes up a lot of space on the disc, which is why most disc makers opt to use either a Dolby or DTS soundtrack format.