The Dolby Digital vs DTS debate remains a long standing, insoluble debate among home theater enthusiasts and "Audiophiles" on the internet (via arenas such as usenet groups) and elsewhere. Debators compare the two audio codecs, Dolby Digital and DTS, arguing that one or the other 'sounds' or 'is' inherently better, yet consensus is rarely reached. This is a home theater forum equivalent subject for Godwin's law. It is unlikely a consensus will ever be reached, due to the inherent difference in volume (DTS is naturally louder than Dolby Digital) preventing accurate comparison. Home cinema, also called Home theater, seeks to reproduce cinema quality video and audio in the home. ... An audiophile, most generally, is a lover of sound or music, but the word is more commonly used about someone who cares about hi-fi playback of sound recordings, rather than live performances. ... Usenet is a distributed Internet discussion system that evolved from a general purpose UUCP network of the same name. ... Codec is a portmanteau of either Compressor-Decompressor or Coder-Decoder, which describes a device or program capable of performing transformations on a data stream or signal. ... Dolby Digital is the trademarked marketing name for Dolby Laboratories lossy AC-3 codec. ... DTS Coherent Acoustics is the full name for the audio format standard usually known as just DTS. It is covered in US Patent #5,956,674. ... Godwins Law (also Godwins Rule of Nazi analogies) is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. ...

The argument for DTS: "DTS is much less compressed than Dolby Digital so it sounds much better than Dolby Digital." In this context 'better' means closer to the original source before the compression occurred.

The argument for Dolby Digital: "Dolby has a more efficient codec that doesn't need the extra bits to create an accurate recreation of the original sound." This argument maintains that the audio data left out by Dolby Digital isn't really heard by the human ear, so the extra data isn't missed on playback. The bitrate savings allow a higher video bitrate, in the context of a DVD.

Note: For 6-channel surround sound, Dolby Digital bitrates generally range from 384 kbit/s to 448 kbit/s (although capable of 640 kbit/s) while DTS bitrates range from 768 kbit/s to 1.5 Mbit/s (1536 kbit/s, the maximum bitrate CD and S/PDIF can allow). For more information on 'the audio data left out' see audio data compression. In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (sometimes written bitrate) is the frequency at which bits are passing a given (physical or metaphorical) point. It is quantified using the bit per second (bit/s) unit. ... In telecommunications and computing, bit rate (sometimes written bitrate) is the frequency at which bits are passing a given (physical or metaphorical) point. It is quantified using the bit per second (bit/s) unit. ... Fiber optic transmitting module TOTX173 S/PDIF or S/P-DIF stands for Sony/Philips Digital Interconnect Format, also IEC 958 type II, part of IEC-60958. ... Note: This article is about audio data compression, which reduces the data rate of digital audio signals. ...

External links

• DTS versus Dolby Digital