Two Audio Formats: AC-3 & DTS

Do you know the sound system of DVD apply. Here let’s learn something about Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS.

Dolby Digital AC-3 is a surround sound system which consists of five full frequency channels plus a subwoofer channel, so it is called the 5.1 channel. These five channels comprise the front left channel, right channel, center channel, and the rear left surround, right surround. The sixth channel is super bass sound channel which contains some additional bass information, and this will make some scenes such as explosion and impact have better sound effect.

Digital Theater System (DTS) is a new technology of surround sound technology. It is also a 5.1 audio system including the left channel, right channel, center channel, left surround channel, right surround channel and subwoofer channel. DTS system also is a full digital multi-channel surround sound technology using the "acoustic" coding and its compression ratio is only 4:1, which can be called "lossless decoding system". Because it is positioned in the professional level, the quality requirements are higher. As a result, during the recording, the compression ratio is much lower than that of the AC-3 system and the playback quality is superior to that of AC-3 system.

DTS digital surround sound also belongs to the 5.1 channel surround sound. However, the compression technology DTS apply is different from AC-3, which will be stored in DVD. When playing, the system must have DTS decoding ability, and then it can release 5.1 channel hidden in the DVD.

Then what’s the difference between DTS and Dolby Digital? The biggest difference is that they use different algorithms, which means they use different ways to compress 5.1 channel sound. Dolby Digital will compress the same content in a smaller size and occupy minimum space comparing that of DTS. Conversely, since DTS does not deliberately pursue the great compression capacity. So, it has the opportunity to save more information. If handled properly, it indeed can provide a superior performance.

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