New product launch – beosound theatre?

[NQVHNWI]

Ok, not easy to give a definitive answer but just did a limited search “new year release” I.e films to be for sale in January. (These are not necessarily new titles – they may be titles that have been released with an upgrade (film definition or sound format or add-ons like directors cut etc….).

180 titles.

112 DTS-HD
46 DTS- TrueHD
55 Atmos
135 PCM
1 DTS-X of which in terms of video quality:-

180 HD
100 UHD+
81 HDR

Finally, I’m not sure of this, with “limited KalWorld forums” in UK/EU, the sharing of technical info is limited but I believe the Player throttles both sound and vision to the receiving equipment or cable limit. That does not mean if you do not have an Atmos receiver, Kaleidescape  downscales to another format your receiver can play…say DTS….it probably falls off a cliff and plays PCM. To be honest….too technical for me.

[beojeff]

The list of DTS:X blu-ray/UHD movies is pretty long. Included in the list are the Harry Potter movies, Fifty Shades movies, Jason Bourne movies, and Jurassic Park movies.

[NQVHNWI]

Missing your point? Please clarify?

[beojeff]

I was suggesting some titles that you might look up on the Kaleidescape store to see if the best possible sound quality is DTS:X. Kaleidescape is dedicated to providing the best movie experience at home (or on a yacht, lol) so that’s a good source to see how we need to be able to get the most out of our B&O audio and video.

[NQVHNWI]

As above, it seems Kaleidescape frequently updates titles as the studio updates. SD to HD to UHD…….HDR. You pay an incremental price for an update (titles are not cheap by any means so better buy titles you can watch over and over again).

I was watching Ready Player One a couple of evenings ago. The film is so so but the sound was incredible. There was a scene in the mix of the main battle scene and there is a pulsing low frequency throb which really hit the chest for a good half minute or more. The BL90s we’re doing their thing but it seemed (illusion??) the BL3s we’re giving a good account of themselves to the sound scene as well.

Finally, I just did a quick update on DTS-X vs Atmos. Seems Atmos is more widely adopted in cinema theatres – the bitrate may be less than DTSX but the produces smaller file packets. Again, too technical for me, I prefer to watch and listen to the material than dwell on the standards. A two minute background summary:

Dolby Atmos vs DTS:X – Which Is Better?

 

[beojeff]

I’m not arguing for the superiority of one format over the other. Rather, I’m just pointing out that disc provides a far superior sound than streaming. Looking at the fact that nearly all streaming is one format (Dolby) neglects the fact that some disc content will only give us the best possible sound with DTS — just because they only offer that as the best sound. Movie collectors will have a great amount of movies that only offer the best audio in DTS format. Therefore, if we’re to enjoy the best possible audio on all movie content, we need both formats on the Theatre.

[Sandyb]

With a DTS encoded disc, surely can we not just get the disc player to output PCM to a Theatre?

I might be missing something, but I thought it was just a matter of choosing which device in your chain does the decode/ unpack of the source signal. So whether the player does, and sends out PCM, or alternatively it sends bitstream (i.e no decoded) onwards should not really make any / much difference.

Obviously with a Theatre not doing DTS-X, one would need to get the media / disc player to do the job and just send out PCM.

Or am I missing something?

[Sandyb]

With a DTS encoded disc, surely can we not just get the disc player to output PCM to a Theatre?

I might be missing something, but I thought it was just a matter of choosing which device in your chain does the decode/ unpack of the source signal. So whether the player does, and sends out PCM, or alternatively it sends bitstream (i.e no decoded) onwards should not really make any / much difference.

Obviously with a Theatre not doing DTS-X, one would need to get the media / disc player to do the job and just send out PCM.

Or am I missing something?

[etype76]

BeoMedia wrote:

Try adjusting the input sensitivity on the BeoSound Theatre instead and see if that improves. It is in the settings.

Yeah, thanks. I’ve tried low, med and high and there’s not much between them. I played Queen’s Greatest Hits on record and sounds very weird, actually missing vocals. Bohemian Rhapsody and Killer Queen on the lyric after the guitar bridge “She’ll absolutely drive you (wild…wild)”, the first “wild” in the backing vocals is gone or at least I can’t hear it. I compared it to the same album over airplay on Apple Music, totally different.

It is either:

My phono preamp to the Theatre

The line-in adapter

Speaker cable length (15m) (well, RCA to RCA into an adapter (RCA female/3.5mm male > into the B&O USB-C adapter.

[Millemissen]

Sandyb wrote:

With a DTS encoded disc, surely can we not just get the disc player to output PCM to a Theatre? I might be missing something, but I thought it was just a matter of choosing which device in your chain does the decode/ unpack of the source signal. So whether the player does, and sends out PCM, or alternatively it sends bitstream (i.e no decoded) onwards should not really make any / much difference. Obviously with a Theatre not doing DTS-X, one would need to get the media / disc player to do the job and just send out PCM. Or am I missing something?

Sadly that is not quite the case with (UHD)bluray players.
Some of these do decode DTS, however they just put out a 2 channel signal (aka stereo).
And even worse, you have to dig deep into the specs to find out, if they do multi channel output or just 2 channel.

MM

[NQVHNWI]

Quick reading, interpretation and summary (I think?)

1. Dolby-Atmos requires minimum 2 height channels, DTS-X does not.
2. DTS-X can fine-tune voice signals, Atmos cannot.
3. DTS-X and Atmos have DTS, DTS-HD and DTS-TrueHD as back-compatible formats because they are not new codecs but extensions to the DTS-TrueHD codec.

The way I interpret the points above is when the Source detects a compatible receiver, all good. If however, a DTS-X file is played to a non-Atmos receiver (or visa-versa), it will downmix to 5.1 or 7.1 DTS-TrueHD.

Thus, going back to Hutsefruts post #13221, there is something wrong I suggest? A DTS file should be downmixed in the Theatre as 5.1 or 7.1 (TrueImage??)

[Sandyb]

wow thanks, I was indeed missing something, so that was useful.

Doing a small amount of digging online, it seems that a player decoding into LPCM is limited to multi-channel (2.0, 5.1 or 7.1) but not the object based data.

I’ll go and have a scan though my discs now to see what the mix of formats I have (although thus far my discs are blu-ray not UHD blu rays, so no object based channels).

 

[NQVHNWI]

In addition to my post above, Dolby Digital Plus (DD+), is a streaming codec used in Amazon, Netflix and Vudu and supports Atmos. The DTS-TrueHD Atmos extension gets folded into the DD+ bitstream, and is either decoded or ignored depending the receiver’s capabilities.

DD+ uses lossy compression, DTS-TrueHD does not.

DTS works in a similar manner but this time, it should be accompanied with extensions to enable more advanced format playback.

This may be Hutsefruts problem? He may not have the accompanying extension in his files to allow transcribing by an Atmos receiver?

[beojeff]

Mr10Percent wrote:

In addition to my post above, Dolby Digital Plus (DD+), is a streaming codec used in Amazon, Netflix and Vudu and supports Atmos. The DTS-TrueHD Atmos extension gets folded into the DD+ bitstream, and is either decoded or ignored depending the receiver’s capabilities. DD+ uses lossy compression, DTS-TrueHD does not. DTS works in a similar manner but this time, it should be accompanied with extensions to enable more advanced format playback. This may be Hutsefruts problem? He may not have the accompanying extension in his files to allow transcribing by an Atmos receiver?

I think you made a typo in using “DTS-TrueHD” when you actually meant “Dolby TrueHD” for Dolby’s version of lossless. DTS’s lossless format is “DTS-HD Master Audio.” Streaming services only use lossy Dolby. Whereas, we get the full lossless formats on discs — if they are included on the disc. However, some discs will only offer lossless in DTS -TrueHD and lossy for Dolby. And vise-versa. When it comes to object-based formats such as Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, it must be decoded in the receiver, i.e. the Theatre. Object-based formats cannot be sent LPCM. They would be down-mixed for LPCM. B&O should just make it simple and provide us with both Dolby and DTS formats (including Dolby Atmos and DTS:X) to make it simple for us.

[beojeff]

I think what we can take away from this is that understanding the formats can be (unnecessarily) confusing when the user just wants it to work and enjoy the best possible sound.

There’s a mentality that since all streaming services only use Dolby and not DTS that DTS support is unnecessary. This could be true for someone using streaming with just the TV’s internal speakers or a cheap soundbar. However, the Theatre should be much more than just a cheap soundbar. With the high performance of B&O speakers, we can really take advantage of the best sound possible and let our B&O speakers shine.

[NQVHNWI]

beojeff wrote:

I think what we can take away from this is that understanding the formats can be (unnecessarily) confusing when the user just wants it to work and enjoy the best possible sound………..However, the Theatre should be much more than just a cheap soundbar.

But I think it does attempt to do this.

1. I get the DTS-Dolby confusion on my part. But sorry, it is all confusing and overly complicated and whether it is DTS-TrueHD or Dolby-TrueHD, I think 99% of those baffled already with the thread get what I was trying to say.
2. Atmos IS Dolby-TrueHD with a height extension as a rule. Uncompressed.
3. DTS-X IS Dolby-TrueHD without height extension. Uncompressed.
4. You will only get the best sound (experience) in either case if you load up on the x.y.2 or x.y.4 configuration in Atmos, otherwise I would say DTS-X = Atmos.

The “User wants it to work and enjoy” bit. Well like everything in life, that depends on how much you want to put into it. Buying all the satellite Beolabs and Theatre to a 7.1.4 (or is the  Theatres maximum 7.3.4??) standard means a pretty congested room. And you still have used only 10% of Atmos channels (I think it can do 128 channels of object based sound).

So at 7.1.4, you have already accepted significant downmixing, so the leap of not having DTS-X installed alongside Atmos is not a big one?

I would say this holds true if you are comparing one “soundbar” with format X against a “soundbar” with format Y? (and to add, listening to a BR-disk with finite storage capacity that would have been down-mixed significantly to fit it all in disc)?

To conclude, I think to “get the best sound and for it all to work“, means a dedicated home theatre room, perhaps more suitable home theatre equipment (dedicated, multiformat large scale receivers in a back-room, Kaleidescape etc….).

To have a BS Theatre and some Beolabs, I think implies a compact but compromised liveable homely setup for 99 out of 100 of us.

 

 

[beojeff]

I’m afraid that you’re still confusing things. There are two competing formats: Dolby and DTS. Each has lossy, lossless, and object-based versions. Object-based is more than just height channels. Some object-based soundtracks do not even use height channels. Discs often support some versions of both Dolby and DTS, but many offer lossless or object-based in only Dolby or DTS and not both. So we have to chose which soundtrack. B&O should just support both Dolby and DTS so that we’ll always be able to get the best soundtrack.

There is a huge difference in quality that you get between lossy and lossless. Why would you spend the money on BL90s and a Kaleidescape system if you’re not going to get the best sound from your system?

[beojeff]

I went to a pile of movies and pulled a couple as an example.

The US boxed set of “A Discovery of Witches” has DTS-HD MA only. Absolutely no Dolby options. If you’r player can decode and send in LPCM, you’re fine — but no if it doesn’t. The UHD of the movie “Jason Bourne” offers audio in DTS-X but no Dolby versions. If your player can decode and send the audio to the Theatre via LPCM, you’ll get a downmix that is not object-based. However, as it stands now we cannot get the full object-based audio (DTS:X) at all through the Theatre. This is why B&O needs to support DTS on the Theatre.

[beojeff]

P.S. On that same “Jason Bourne” disc, the Spanish track is DTS-HD (lossless but not object-based) and the French track is DTS Digital Surround (lossy). So there can be quite a variety of audio tracks on one disc that are not of the same quality.

[Sandyb]

well put indeed – and until now, and prompted by MM, I didnt realised that a player outputting LPCM is limited to multi channel and will downmix any object based audio. So I’m completely onboard with your sentiment. Whether anything actually changes on the Theatre w.r.to DTS-X, I doubt unfortunately.

It does worry me a little (and I’ve thought this since its launch) that the Theatre+LG is made / designed more for standalone use with streaming services, than the previous Beosystem focussed products. No matrix support, fewer PUC ports etc etc all add to this impression. Anyway, forgive the digression.

 

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