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Old 15th January 2019, 16:28   #6648  |  Link
Atak_Snajpera
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Join Date: May 2006
Location: Poland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by nevcairiel View Post
Except on a technical level it really is not.

At least DTS has a "core" you can use for a direct comparison, since it has to be from the same master. If you were to decode both the core and the full HD stream to PCM and send that PCM to your "HD Amp", I'm positive that in most cases you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. What these devices do is cheat you by playing with volume and EQ settings that play towards how people perceive audio. Just a slight bit more volume for HD, and most people already perceive it as "better", and there is more such tricks.

Or take a HD track and re-encode it as AC3, just to ensure its the same master, and then decode both back to PCM and send that to the Amp so the Amp does not know what the original format was.

There is a lot of trickery to try to sell you on "HD" stuff, because they had to sell you something, and in fact the audio quality difference have been minimal for years. If one really goes deep into it on a technical level, you'll eventually find that out. If you just blindly trust the Amp, then sure, HD probably sounds better to you, but not because its HD audio, but because the Amp cheats you.
That whole TrueHD/Lossless audio topic reminds of 192KHz 24bit bullshit promoted by some well known companies. (Super Audio-CD , DVD-Audio and others). Facts are simple. 48Khz 16bit is more than enough for humans. Adults have hearing range up to ~18KHz ,so it still below 24Khz. The same story with bit depth.
TrueHD can sounds better than AC3 640kbps only if was encoded from better source or your amp is doing some tricks boosting artificially volume for some frequencies. (bass/trebles). If 128kbps OPUS/AAC is transparent for 2.0 then I see no reason why 320kbps wouldn't be enough for 5.1.

Last edited by Atak_Snajpera; 15th January 2019 at 16:31.
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