What is 5.1 Digital Surround Sound?

Ok everyone as you know it's always a pleasure to have y'all here to read what the MaxMan has to say about whatever it is he is carrying on about.

Today we are gonna dive back into the whole surround sound format thing that I have been on about lately.

This is a very in depth topic as some of you probably already know and for that reason I'm going to break it up into sections to make it a little more understandable not only for you but for me also

Yeah, yeah I know, I'm supposed to be the expert and know everything home theater.

Well I do. But knowing and doing are two different things. You see I could just blurt out all the info that I have stored inside this unstable brain of mine but it would just sound like a foreign language to most of you.

And thats no freakin good is it? You'll end up leaving more confused than when you got here. So just bare with me while I digest this info onto more understandable terms for all of us. OK?

Digital 5.1 Surround Sound

5.1 tells us how many channels we have. We have a left channel (speaker), center channel (speaker), right channel (speaker), left rear (surround speaker), right rear (surround speaker)so thats 5 channels. The final channel we have is the .1 which is always dedicated as the low frequency channel which would be for bass (subwoofer).

Now I know what you thinking. "Maxman you just gave us 6 channels not 5.1" and yes from a physical point of view you'd be right. But back up a little here will ya?

The reason the subwoofer channel is classed as a .1 and not a 1 is because low frequncy channels aren't a full bandwidth channel like the other channels. Now that I explained that piece of useless info lets get on with it.

As you probably figured the diagram above shows you a typical 5.1 speaker set up that you would have in your living/home theater room.

What Do You Get With Digital 5.1

Well with 5.1 your rear surround speakers are now delivering audio in stereo sound rather than mono. So what this means is that all of the sounds whether they be music, dialogue or effects will be sent to the correct location relative to what you are seeing on the screen in front of you.

This makes your viewing experience much more realistic with all the sounds coming and going in the directions they were intended to.Resulting in making you feel like you are part of the show. Hey maybe you are.

Now there are basically two competing 5.1 formats if you will and they are Dolby Digital and DTS (Digital Theater Systems).

Originally known as AC-3 it first came into movie theaters in 1992 as Dolby Stereo Digital. As mentioned earlier it gives 5 major channels what is known as full range 3Hz-20,000Hz and a 6th channel for low range effects (subwoofer).

Dolby Digital 5.1 has been around for some time now, since 1995 to be exact and it's pretty hard to find a DVD title not encoded in this format.

Basically what Dolby Digital 5.1 does (without getting too technical) is it tries to get rid of what we can't hear and without sacrificing what we can hear using a process they call "Perceptual Coding" the result being a higher yield of optimal sound for the human ear.

Did that make sense?

Let me translate that into MaxMan lingo "It sounds cool man"

DTS is very similar to Dolby Digital 5.1 but it does have some differences. It uses higher data rates (than Dolby Digital) for encoding it's 5.1 surround sound.

It has been designed to filter the audio signal into frequency bands, which match the critical perceptual bands of the human ear.

Does anybody know who Steven Speilberg is?

Well Mr Spielberg was one of the first to get on board with DTS siting his dissatisfaction with theater sound at the time as a major reason.

Work started on DTS around about 1991 but the final product wasn't released until late 1995 and Mr Spielbergs movie "Jurassic Park" was the first film to be encoded with DTS.

DTS is regarded by many industry experts as the superior format over Dolby digital but the fact of the matter is it doesn't even come close to Dolby Digital when you start shopping for DVD titles. You will find the majority of titles encoded with Dolby Digital, some encoded with DTS and some encoded with both.

Final Word

Now don't be stressing about what format you might prefer over the other.

You will be very hard pressed to find an amplifier/receiver or DVD player that doesn't support both of these formats, it's pretty much standard. The only thing you should pay special attention to is reading the back cover of the DVD you are about to purchase to see what format it is encoded with.

Either way you slice it I must say that both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS sound great.

MaxMan Out

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