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Dolby Digital vs Dolby Atmos vs DTS-surround sound – Detailed Comparision

Recreational activities are the most sought-after solution for stressed people. Working for the entire day and cope with the mental strain, they explore many options to appease their thirst for entertainment. One such panacea to all our accumulated stress is music. The music that we all admire, not the same categories but everyone likes some variety of music. Hearing those soothing or party or sometimes romantic music is what takes the stress away.

Not only music but the movies or TV shows are also the cure working as stress busters. However, if the sound effects and music in the media are not up to the mark, then the whole movie experience might become futile. Sometimes, it results in frustration when the theatrical sounds are not that crisp and detailed. For this reason, the industry is advancing while inventing new technologies to enhance the listening experience of the users. There has been an upsurge in the available sound codecs and other tech support trying to deliver the desired performance to the keen sound lovers.

This article will read a detailed account of three major sound technologies, namely Dolby digital, DTS-Surround sound, and Dolby Atmos. It will apprise you of their definitions, working, components, and other essential aspects.

Before getting into the details, let’s understand some terms that would occur in the further article.

Surround Sound

This term alludes to every specific sound system that effectively produces the mainstream sound and minimal effects from several directions. It is like delivering the phenomenal sound experience covering the 360 degrees around the listener. The sound produced is optimized perfectly to give a three-dimensional feeling. These sound effects readily make you feel entirely immersed in the movies that you are watching in theatres.

While producing the necessary audio, this sound system keeps the check on the levels and directions of the objects. Thus, delivering the relevant sounds while being in sync with direction and distance. The several speakers placed strategically to create a well-optimized sound field enhance the media-consuming experience of the audience.

Difference between 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound channels

As the name goes, 5.1 incorporates the five main speakers or channels combined with one LFE (low-frequency enhancement) channel. The five main speakers are placed strategically, with one each in the center, left, and right. The other two get utilized as surround sound channels and placed in the rear region of the user. The two speakers placed left and right are nearly at right angles from the user, but strictly right/left to the video output device in a theatrical set-up. The placement of the LFE channel sub-woofer can be anywhere as per the requirement arises.

On the other hand, the 7.1 audio channel incorporates four surround speakers for an enhanced surround sound experience. Here the front set-up of speakers is the same as of 5.1. However, on the rear side, they excellently split four audio channels to improve the media-consuming experience.

Immersive Sound Experience

To explain this, you should understand the situation in a cinema hall and the movie scenes are depicting airplanes or raining scenes. Just imagine the audio coming from above in addition to sides. It is what we simply call the immersive sound experience, which is a notch ahead of the surround system. It incorporates the efficient utilization of overhead space in the theatres. The number of speakers employed is according to the size of theatres and the requirement for creating efficient sound effects. This entire system embodies the user inside it, placing you at the center creating a dome-shaped sound system.

So, without any further delay, let’s get straight to the explanation of all three audio compression technologies.

Dolby Laboratories

While considering the surround sound technology for movies, the Dolby will be the first name to pop in the head of many. “Dolby Labs” has already dominated the surround sound marketplace owing to the introduction of first of its kind tech. Dolby has a wide range of engineered sounds, and Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos are two of them.

Dolby Digital

The Dolby Digital audio functionality can be explained as a multichannel enabled codec powered by Dolby labs. It ensures the delivery of detailed surround sound while consuming the media in Theatres or homes. The first movie to include this audio technique is “Batman Returns (1992)”. Being that old and for a longer time, it is prominently called Industry-standard and has the capabilities to deliver a world-class cinematic experience, even at home.

It generally includes the use of six channels for delivering that surround sound, which lets you feel and hear the voices coming from every direction. Six channels are:

  1. Center speaker
  2. Right speaker
  3. Right surround speaker
  4. Left speaker
  5. Left surround speaker
  6. Low frequencies (LFE for bass)

Technical Specifications of Dolby Digital

Formerly known as the AC-3 audio format, it is a codec that supports 5.1 surround sound. It is solely based on the technology named “Modified Discrete Cosine Transform (MDCT)”. This format supports a wide range of sample rates, including 32, 44.1, and 48 kHz.

An extension of this audio technology is Dolby Digital Plus, also known as E-AC-3. This improvement over the AC-3 has that technical support for 7.1 surround sounds and has the same sample rates as AC-3. This technology readily supports higher bit rates and delivers improved quality with lower bit rates.

Dolby Atmos

The Dolby Atmos audio technology is the advanced assortment of many other Dolby codecs. It is an object-based high-quality surround sound tech that engenders a three-dimensional sound for the movies. It was developed in the year 2012 and is a considerable expansion over the 5.1 and 7.1 set-ups of the sound channels.

Set-up to create effective Dolby Atmos

In this technology prevalently employed in the theatres, the speakers are embedded in the walls at different heights combined with some placed below chairs. Besides, the speaker system embedded in the ceilings of the theatre creates a dome around the users creating a Dome of sound effects to give an immersive and 3-D sound effect.

To explain in simple words, if someone runs in the screen and goes behind, then you would hear the running sounds later from the speaker installed at your backside. This sound then fades as if the person is running away. This sound technology creates a realistic approach. A maximum of around 400 speakers can be employed in a fully developed Dolby Atmos cinema hall.

However, having these many speakers in home theatres is impractical. We can employ around 6 to 10 speaker system with some two-two speakers at the right and left walls and other fitted in the ceilings. You can purchase a home-specific and calibrated sound system with Dolby Atmos-enabled to enjoy that superior technology.

Technical Specs

It incorporates Dolby TrueHD (generally used for Blu-ray discs), Dolby MAT (gaming), and Dolby Digital Plus (for OTT platforms and broadcasting) are the decoders and improved the working of these with the implementation of object-audio metadata. It supports a 10-bed channels system with around 118 audio objects in its bitstream. Besides, these are capable of handling legacy channel-based content.

DTS (Digital Theatre System)

DTS has been the fierce rival of Dolby Labs in the surrounding industry. Established in the year 1993, DTS technology got its way in the movie Jurassic Park. It is well known for producing multichannel audio technologies under the name DTS. It developed its tech based on the audio compression tech known as Adaptive Differential Pulse-Code Modulation (ADPCM). The audio Bit-rates are far more superior than the Dolby (AC-3), resulting in lossless audio production while decoding.

It comes in various formats, and we have discussed some significant ones to give you a brief knowledge about them.

DTS-HD; Master Audio (MA) and High-Resolution Audio (HRA)

The complete DTS-HD technology is a merged audio tech with the fundamental components being Master Audio and High-Resolution Audio. The DTS-HD High-Resolution Audio is truly capable of delivering audio channels of up to 7.1 with the 24-bit depth audio resolution and 96kHz sampling frequency.

As the name suggests, the DTS-HD Master Audio is the Ace in audio technology that virtually supports the unlimited channels of surround sound system. Hence, it can produce the Bit-rates with quality ranging from superior 24-bit and 192kHz sampling rate to the 5.1 or even 2.1 audio system.

The MA audio system can also support eight channels combined with nine objects that are encoded at 24 bit and 192kHz sampling rates.

DTS:X

This technology is a true rival of Dolby Atmos, and both produce the top-tier sound quality of music listening and movies. In this audio technology, the purely mapping technique comes in effect, where the direction and position of listeners act as a kind of polar coordinates. Then after the efficient processing, the sound is produced, taking into account the number of speakers and their positions. The DTS is a flexible and highly systemized audio technology which do not require ceiling speakers.

Some Extensive Differences

Insight into formats-Dolby technology-DTS technology

For the Object-based or immersive sound experience, Dolby developed the Dolby Atmos (also known as AC-4), and DTS developed the DTS:X; both are rivals with some codec dissimilarities in place.

For the Virtual audio surround sounds, Dolby Pro Logic or Dolby Atmos technologies and DTS Virtual:X or DTS Neo:6 or DTS Neo:X.

For the 7.1 surround sound system, Dolby has to offer its Dolby Digital Plus (E-AC-3) and DTS offers DTS HD or DTS HD Master Audio technologies.

For the 5.1 surround sound system, Dolby has the Dolby Digital or AC-3, and DTS developed the DTS Coherent Acoustics.

This comparison asserts clearly that both the companies are developing the technologies to cater to the needs of consumers while competing at every audio qualitative layer.

Bit Rate Support

Talking of the big players of Dolby Labs, the Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos can compress the audio to the bitrate of 640 Kbits per second and 2 Mbps respectively for the Blu-ray discs. While jumping to the DVDs where the size is also a restriction, the bit rate is downsized up to 448 Kbps.

On the contrary, the DTS audio technology supports the higher bitrates up to 1.5Mbps for the Blu-ray discs and around 768Kbps for the normal DVDs. All the mentioned values might subject to change with the different compression techniques employed. Hence, to be precise, you can check the specific disc or file.

The technology employed for Audio Compression

The Dolby Labs developed their products (Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos), which are all based on the DPCM (Differential Pulse-Code Modulation) audio compression technology which is less adaptive and flexible while producing sound.

On the other hand, the DTS has utilized the ADPCM (Adaptive Differential Pulse-Code Modulation) audio compression technique for their audio surround sound tech.

Device and Software Support

To simply state, the Dolby is like the most popular and widely used technology as compared to DTS. The OTT (Over The Top) platforms, like Prime Video and Netflix, are prevalent today owing to the convenience they provide while making available the large pool of movies and TV shows. These platforms largely support the Dolby Atmos or Dolby enabled other technologies. Even many smartphones are Dolby Atmos-enabled for providing a better media consumption experience. The Dolby support in the small devices might sound like a gimmick, yet they have software capable of enabling the output sound or music to be immersive.

Final Thoughts

Till now, you might have got the notion of every detailed aspect related to the Dolby and DTS audio technologies developed to take the movie-watching experience to the next level. These might not be the only players in the market yet are prominent due to high quality and a little bit of hype created through magnificent events.

Hence, this brings us to the end of this informational piece. I hope you would have understood the core dissimilarities of audio technologies. Along with some other apt terms like surround sound, immersive sound. However, as a casual listener, you would not be able to discern the difference between these. You can grab any of these audio techs and relieve the stress while enjoying the immersive experiences while listening to music or watching movies or TV shows.

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