Is DTS Master Audio worth the upgrade?

[Randy99CL]

11 years ago I bought an Onkyo 6.1 system and loved it.
Great sex clouded my mind and I gave it to my girlfriend 6 years ago.

Last year I bought a Sony 5.1 blu-ray player/5.1 surround system that has DTS Master Audio. Sounds pretty good but not as good as the Onkyo.

The (now-ex) girlfriend is giving me the Onkyo system back.

Because of it's age the Onkyo doesn't have DTS Master Audio but does have DTS-ES (discrete and matrix) and Dolby Digital EX decoders.

I live in an apartment and don't listen at high volume levels.
I'm wondering if the Master Audio sounds noticeably better than DTS-ES. Would it be worth $300+ to replace a decent receiver that otherwise has all that I want?

Thanks!

 

[JAG87]

Great sex clouded my mind and I gave it to my girlfriend 6 years ago.

This line earned you my reply. Brilliant


If the onkyo has hdmi and everything else you need, dts MA is definitely not worth upgrading for. Especially considering your living space.

Even in a proper theater room, one would have to have some fairly high end speakers and adequate sound pressure to hear a distinct difference between the core dts and the MA track.

The difference is more pronounced however between core ac3 and trueHD, in case you are wondering.

 

[alcoholbob]

Depends on your speakers. If you have some all-in-1 box set, its probably not worth it.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Yeah depends on the rest of your components. But if you have a nice setup and/or are going to upgrade other parts then it'd be worth it I'd probably say. Otherwise not a big deal, and the key aspect is that anything that has a DTS-HD/MA file likely received a higher quality transfer/mix of the audio, and that should carry through somewhat even without the full lossless, as it'll pass through the core DTS file. At least I assume that's how it works since it'd make less sense to include an entirely other lossy mix that's entirely different.

 

[Binky]

My system doesn't have "DTS Master blah blah," but every time I have spent money on a tech upgrade like that (over the last 20 years), I have been disappointed. It will take you time, money, and possibly frustration just to get back to where it sounds mostly the same as it did before, or it may end up just slightly better. By then you won't remember exactly what it sounded like before, so you will convince yourself that it sounds better and move on.

Of course, my room/system/patience/ears have never been quite good enough to even notice these slight tech upgrades. I skip these upgrades until my unit actually dies.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Yeah, these kinds of upgrades don't make as much a difference. The only real reason to upgrade at times are if your equipment breaks, or a new physical standard comes out that you need to use to really take advantage of the other equipment you own (i.e. you buy a new 4k 3D TV, but your receiver only has HDMI 1.3, or you replaced all your speakers with really high quality gear, etc.).

 

[Randy99CL]

Thanks for the help!

Yes, the Onkyo's a big box system that cost about $800 (at Circuit City) back then.

It doesn't have HDMI but it never made much sense to me to run the video through the receiver anyway.
It has four digital audio inputs but three are optical. The out from my TV is coaxial so I'll have to find a blu-ray player with optical out.

I'll be setting up the system later this week. From what you've all written I doubt I could hear any improvement with Master Audio.

Thanks again!

 

[Justinus]

So, I have a Yamaha Aventage RX-A1000 receiver that supports DTS Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD and it powers a set of Klipsch Epic CF-2 speakers.

I have A/B tested MA/TrueHD against the DTS-HD or Dolby HD audio on multiple BR discs and I always have the same opinion:

If it doesn't have MA/TrueHD, it sucks. The difference is unbelievable, and I have had to A/B it for multiple friends that didn't believe it would make a big difference. I won't get a BR disc if it doesn't have one or the other.



At one point, my blue ray player had a firmware bug where it would drop the master audio to HD audio and back. It made it really easy to see just how bad the HD audio sucks.

Edit: I should clarify that the receiver was a $1000 unit and the speakers are extremely underrated gems that sound amazing. I can see the difference being less stellar on an HTIB.

 

[purbeast0]

the "HD" audio tracks vs the normal 5.1 tracks are WWWAAAAAYYYYY better. if you have decent equipment, the difference will be night and day.

i watched whiplash on dvd last weekend, followed by horrible bosses 2 on bluray. one movie is all about the sound, one is not, and unfortunately the movie that is all about the sound i could only get in DD.

the sound in horrible bosses 2 blew the sound in whiplash out of the water. and that movie isn't even about the sound at all. but holy crap it was crazy to watch a DD movie back to back with one that had DTS-MA. i was disappointed that redbox didn't even carry the bluray of whiplash though and i wasn't going to buy it, so that was my only hope.

 

[LoveMachine]

the "HD" audio tracks vs the normal 5.1 tracks are WWWAAAAAYYYYY better. if you have decent equipment, the difference will be night and day.

i watched whiplash on dvd last weekend, followed by horrible bosses 2 on bluray. one movie is all about the sound, one is not, and unfortunately the movie that is all about the sound i could only get in DD.

the sound in horrible bosses 2 blew the sound in whiplash out of the water. and that movie isn't even about the sound at all. but holy crap it was crazy to watch a DD movie back to back with one that had DTS-MA. i was disappointed that redbox didn't even carry the bluray of whiplash though and i wasn't going to buy it, so that was my only hope.

Watching 2 different movies from 2 different sources is not a fair comparison. Watch HB2 in DTS-MA, then again in DTS.

 

[poofyhairguy]

the "HD" audio tracks vs the normal 5.1 tracks are WWWAAAAAYYYYY better.

Depends.

AC3 vs Dolby True HD is huge because the bitrate of normal AC3 is pathetic. Dolby True HD is WAAAAAY better than AC3.

DTS vs DTS MA is a different story. The core DTS track on a Blu Ray is VERY high bitrate compared to AC3 (like three times as much), and I don't think anyone could tell the difference on a speaker set less than $1000. Maybe $2000.

To answer OP, DTS MA is probably not worth it. But Dolby True HD is worth doing it all.

 

[purbeast0]

Depends.

AC3 vs Dolby True HD is huge because the bitrate of normal AC3 is pathetic. Dolby True HD is WAAAAAY better than AC3.

DTS vs DTS MA is a different story. The core DTS track on a Blu Ray is VERY high bitrate compared to AC3 (like three times as much), and I don't think anyone could tell the difference on a speaker set less than $1000. Maybe $2000.

To answer OP, DTS MA is probably not worth it. But Dolby True HD is worth doing it all.

ah okay. i didn't realize how much of a difference is between normal AC3 and DTS. and yeah, whiplash is not DTS just DD, so that could also be part of the drastic difference i saw.

 

[Muadib]

The upgrade would be worth it if you had decent speakers. As you will be using the speakers in your HTIB, I don't think you would hear the enough of a difference to make it worth it. Upgrade your speakers first, and do HD audio later.

 

[bradly1101]

Oh great, probably more dynamic range.

 

[motsm]

The DTS core track will be 1.5mbps, spread across 6 channels in most cases. The Dolby Digital tracks found on a BD are typically 640kbps per 6 channels. Obviously they are using their own form of compression, but having nearly 2.4 times the bandwidth should yield much better results.

As for lossless, I think it's really hard to make that choice for someone. How do you listen to music, CD, FLAC, MP3, etc,?

 

[NutBucket]

Thanks for the help!

Yes, the Onkyo's a big box system that cost about $800 (at Circuit City) back then.

It doesn't have HDMI but it never made much sense to me to run the video through the receiver anyway.
It has four digital audio inputs but three are optical. The out from my TV is coaxial so I'll have to find a blu-ray player with optical out.

I'll be setting up the system later this week. From what you've all written I doubt I could hear any improvement with Master Audio.

Thanks again!

Wait, if you're feeding it from your TV it's not going to pass multi-channel audio from an HDMI source.

As for SPDIF from a blu-ray player, read this: http://www.mpcclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=21715

 

[JAG87]

ah okay. i didn't realize how much of a difference is between normal AC3 and DTS. and yeah, whiplash is not DTS just DD, so that could also be part of the drastic difference i saw.

There is a huge difference with Dolby, not so much with DTS, which is why DTS destroyed Dolby on BD, even though DTS licensing is more expensive.

Some DTS-MA tracks do not even reach 2000 kb/s, which goes to show how little information is really left over from the 1536 kb/s core DTS track. There will never be an obvious improvement like there is between a 640 kb/s core AC3 track and a TrueHD track.

In layman terms, the AC3 track is comparable to listening to a 192k MP3 (around 100k per channel), whereas the core DTS is comparable to listening to 512k MP3.... (around 256k per channel).

 

[Randy99CL]

Thanks for the help!

Finally got the system setup last week and I'm lovin it.
Can't expect much from a HTIB but the sound is clean, transparent and well defined. Bass is tight and not boomy. Overall I'm really happy with it.

The Dolby D and DTS both sound good and (as some have said) I doubt that I could hear much difference with MA or TrueHD. It's good enough for now.

Amazon has a great price on a Yamaha receiver today, and I'm tempted, but I'm saving for a bigger screen first.

Thanks again!