Sound Quality Question

[themystical]

Sound Quality Question.


This is a question for all those people who have listened to and compared vanilla DD/DTS with the DDTrueHD/DTS Master Audio! How would you describe the difference in SQ using analogies such as:
Similar to the difference between CD and SACD? (With my hifi equipment this is not night and day and I could happily live with CD)
Similar to the difference between MP3 (say 192 kb resolution) and CD quality?(I perceive a large night and day difference here and couldn't live with MP3)
Similar to the difference between Prologic 2 and DD/DTS? (Personally I perceive a night and day difference here and couldn't live with just Prologic 2)
I am keen to get a handle on the perceived differences in SQ before I spend even more money "upgrading?"

[Nick]

MP3 to CD is the closest way of summing IMO. The major thing that changes is the scale of the sound.

[themystical]

Nick wrote:

MP3 to CD is the closest way of summing IMO. The major thing that changes is the scale of the sound.

So your average punter is not going to hear a difference but it is night and dayused in conjunction withaudiophile high-end equipment?

[Alex A]

themystical wrote:

Nick wrote:

MP3 to CD is the closest way of summing IMO. The major thing that changes is the scale of the sound.

So your average punter is not going to hear a difference but it is night and dayused in conjunction withaudiophile high-end equipment?

Given a decent surround kit, I suspect your average punter would almost certainly notice the difference. As Nick points out, it tends to give much better scale and substance to the sound. More flesh on the bones, along with a decent improvement in clarity/detail.

Whether your average punter would care, well, maybe not.

[Alex A]

Oh and for well recorded/mastered high definition music DVDs (one particular favorite is Bruce Springsteen - Live in Dublin), the audio can be substantially better than DVD., and this is where the improved rates of the HD formats are most telling IMO.

I also have the CD of that recording and I'd say that the Blu Ray is even better: It does have a slightly higher sampling rate at 48kHz rather than 44.1kHz of CD and is uncompressed PCM, so there is technical reason to expect a slight improvement.

[themystical]

From the responses so far it seems like a very worthwhile upgrade! Hopefully there will be some demos at the Manchester Hifi show in a couple of weeks time that I will be able to check for myself. Onkyo seem to be one of the few companies coming up with receivers doing HD sound. Any views on equipment?