Dolby Digital Plus

[omega2K4]

LAS VEGAS--Dolby Digital has seen some enhancements over the years as it's become the most common multichannel standard. But in the not-so-distant future, it's going to get a huge overhaul. At CES, Dolby gave Dolby Digital Plus its major debut, showing how it takes advantage of advances in storage, recording, optical density, and bandwidth.

Previously announced and briefly demoed at AES late last year, Dolby Digital Plus has had enough time behind the scenes to gather industry support. It's been named as a standard for the upcoming HD DVD format, though the forces behind the competing Blu-ray disc format have yet to make a similar announcement.

Dolby Digital Plus builds on the original Dolby Digital specifications, allowing for higher bit rates and more channels. Dolby Digital Plus has a maximum bit rate of 6mbps and supports 13.1 channels. In comparison, Dolby Digital caps out at 640kbps and 5.1 channels. So Dolby Digital Plus essentially provides 10 times the bandwidth of the original Dolby Digital. The new format also allows for extremely low bit rate multichannel sound for streaming on the Web or over the air. The benefits of the Dolby Digital Plus codec include transient prenoise processing, enhanced channel coupling, adaptive hybrid transform processing, and channel and program extensions.

Whereas the original Dolby Digital signal was sent over either optical or coaxial cables, Dolby Digital Plus uses the new HDMI connector. Content encoded with Plus will be backwards compatible, but the resulting sound won't be as detailed.

Dolby couldn't explicitly say if Dolby Digital Plus will be used on upcoming game consoles, leaving those announcements for first parties. But that may be the next logical step, if bit rates are practical for real-time applications, given that the current generation supports Dolby Digital and Dolby Pro Logic II.

On another front, Dolby is bringing Dolby Digital 5.1 encoding to the masses. With Dolby Digital 5.1 Creator, you can create your own 5.1 mixes for home movies. This new feature was demonstrated at CES with the Sony DVD Handycam DCR-DVD403. Using a multichannel microphone, the Handycam allows you to capture sounds from all directions so you can produce home movies with 5.1 sound.

13.1 Surround sound, awesome. I'm glad I didn't get a new reciever not too long ago, I guess I can wait for this. Hope it isn't too expensive.

[punx1325]

13.1...what the hell are you going to do with 13 speakers. At that many speakers you are going to have them coming out of the couch!

[catback]

Originally Posted by punx1325

13.1...what the hell are you going to do with 13 speakers. At that many speakers you are going to have them coming out of the couch!

That's easy your going to have 3 speakers on all four sides equally spaced apart on the wall, a center channel by the TV, and a sub. Of course, that's just an example of how you could place the 14 speakers. If you want you could place them in a circle surrounding your couch, can anyone say "surround sound"

[soccerchamp76]

Or, for the front, have 3 speakers (front left, center, front right). On the left and right side you have 3 speakers (left left, left middle, left right, right left, right middle, right right), then 4 rear speakers.

Or with the 3 speakers arranged in a square, there could be the possibilty of an ceiling channel. So in the case where aerial noise is recorded, the ceiling speakers takes control. Now having an airplane flying over the screen would be incredibly realistic.

[Catmandu]

The theaters near here don't even have 13 speakers. Anyway, there are plenty of movies where I don't WANT to feel like I'm in the middle of the action. Such as Saving Private Ryan. Bullets wizzing around my head? Not needed.

[bendsley]

Originally Posted by Catmandu

The theaters near here don't even have 13 speakers. Anyway, there are plenty of movies where I don't WANT to feel like I'm in the middle of the action. Such as Saving Private Ryan. Bullets wizzing around my head? Not needed.

Haha. Funny. I setup my surround sound the other day, and watched Twister in DTS. SCARED THE HELL OUT OF ME. The flying cow sounded like it was flying out of my ass.

[Catmandu]

And if you had one of those subwoofer shakers under your chair, you'd probably feel like you were sitting on that cow. I'm a voyeur. I would rather pretend I'm looking at something thru a window. Now, watching a concert video with 13 speaker surround sound would be a different story. I love watching the Talking Heads or Jane's Addiction films in 5.1. Way cool.