Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Is it because people generally listen to music on the go on portable devices and not on their home theatre ?

A good DTS/Surround sound cd is bloody amazing!

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Yeah, that's the reason. People listen to music on the go.
FWIW I have about 20 SACDs and love them so much. Wish I'd bought a lot more.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Gone are the days where people just sit and listen to music.

I can remember as a kid sitting in my room just listening to an album. Just that. Not also playing a video game, or perusing the internet, or with the TV on, or reading a magazine, or looking at a comic, or talking on the phone or etc. etc.

Just sitting listening to the music. They might put you in a padded room if you do just that nowadays.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Thanks guys :)

No one told this guy ! check out the equipment in this listening room !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZHjRe-hm_s

Now for those who are interested in listening to amazing surround sound audio on their home theatre, please check out this guy

https://www.facebook.com/DKASurround

I can't tell you where to get his projects, but be creative, you will find them on the net :)

They are 2 to 3 gigs each per album in DTS-HD and sound bloody amazing

His Daft Punk Random Access Memories and Michael Jackson's Thriller and Bad in particular rock

I found myself enjoying songs and artists i normally wouldn't enjoy purely because of the sound quality

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Go ahead, put me in a padded room! I rarely listen to music "on the go", as when I'm walking I want to hear what's actually around me, and while driving I usually can't have music very loud or I can't navigate (part of the weird way my brain works.) I do listen to loud music going long stretches on the freeway, but nothing beats listening at home with zero distractions.

DTS CDs were initially overpriced ($25 each) and they seem to have stopped making them when SACD and DVD-Audio came out. I have a number of fan-made DTS CDs taken from old quadraphonic reel-to-reel or 8-track tapes that are pretty killer, they still sound like analog tape of course but haven't been issued any other way.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Im sourcing more and more DTS and SACD sources and it really is changing music for me

Just sitting in my listening chair with my eyes closed listening to the surround sound just transports you

More so than watching a movie with surround sound because with your eyes closed, it's all about your ears.

some stand outs for me so far

Pink Floyd
Dire Straits
Def Leppard

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Before HDMI, it was a total pain in the ass to get true hi-res sound from DVDA and SACD. But that pales in comparison to the fact people just don't give a fuck about sound quality.

I love my DVDA/SACDs. Here are some of my favs:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...diophiliac.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi..._Halloween.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41DWDQ54WJL.jpg http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...500_AA300_.jpg http://www.allaboutjazz.com/coverart...nniversary.jpg

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

I didn't just sit and listen to music in one place when surround sound music came out. Coupled with the price, I never really got into it. I have a few surround discs, and while very cool, they aren't something I ever listen to.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Blu-ray audio is the way to go nowadays.

I'll pick this up one of these days:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...oL._SY450_.jpg

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Surround Sound music could work in cars with front/rear speakers. So you don't necessarily have to be stuck at home.

I think it's more to do with the new audio disc formats in general not taking off. I think if DVD-A had been included with every DVD player, instead of a separate license manufacturers had to pay, DVD-Audio could've taken off. They learned their lesson with BD-A, but by then it was too late, as everyone had moved to downloads.

It's possible once downloadable music defaults to lossless, the next step would be offering surround-sound downloads. I don't think MP3 has the ability for more than 2 tracks built into the spec. There was an surround extension for mp3 developed, but it never caught on.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Yes, but with very few exceptions (including the title you pictured), it's a 2 channel format. Same with SACD. They still make them, but hardly any are in surround anymore.

So it seems surround sound is now dead in the water except in rare instances like the new Pink Floyd.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

My wife's old Acura had DVD-A capability. Not sure if her new car does or not. It was sort of silly. There's really not enough separate of the speakers to enjoy the experience.

[/QUOTE]

SACD and DVD-A were audiophile formats and I don't believe we ever intended for mass consumption. The first players (I have an old Pioneer) required 6 analog cables and a receiver with analog surround inputs. (If my terminology is off forgive me, I was never much interested in the technical side of hardware. :)) That was a royal pain in the ass and required a receiver capable of accepting that octopus of cables. Sure, you could play any old DVD-A in surround but you weren't getting the high resolution that format was meant to be.

I have recently bought surround blu-rays of Rush: 2112, Yes: Close To The Edge, and XTC: Nonsuch. Seems they are making them for Prog-rock nerds that enjoy that sort of thing and actually appreciate audio fidelity.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

The labels were very dumb for attempting surround releases before HDMI. It was a pain in the ass trying to get 5.1 surround systems installed before the days of that technology.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

This is like saying Blu-ray is a videophile format and never intended for mass consumption.

Record companies and manufacturers were struggling to fine a way to get people to re-buy music, and they thought a higher-fidelity format was the way. That's why SACD used the "CD" acronym in it, it was meant as a replacement format similar to HD-DVD.
http://www.newscenter.philips.com/ma...ticle-2217.wpd
See more here:
http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...n.digitalmusic
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jul9...cdnextgen.html


They knew that higher-quality audio and surround sound would appeal to audiophiles first, but they were hoping that as adoption increased in both players and releases, that they'd become the new dominant format.

It wasn't so much that the tech wasn't available, but the labels didn't want any lossless digital signal without DRM to be used. Basically, they wanted to protect against "ripping" the discs like what happened with CDs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Aud...ssor_interface

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

actually I find the surround cues distracting when you're driving. but it's fun nonetheless.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

The 6-channel inputs were one of my main requirements when purchasing a new receiver a couple of years ago, since my "old" Sony 5-disc SACD player still works fine. Those inputs are getting scarce, however; there was little question that I was going to stick with Harman Kardon, but I ended up going with a previous generation model because the newest versions at the time had dropped them.

I have made back my SACD investment a couple times over just by unloading a few that I never listened to. I sold the Bruce Cockburn disc for more than I paid for the player itself, and I could easily clear another few hundred if I ever decide to sell off the Alison Krauss and Keane discs (all of which are great, by the way).

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

This is something I could be into, if it wasn't for the dearth of titles available which would interest me.

Even the original stereo mixes sounded like garbage in many less popular metal and punk rock albums I really liked listening to. (Never mind dts/surround sound).

Back in the day, it sounded like the producer + studio engineer(s) were either completely drunk/stoned, incompetent, and/or they simply didn't give a damn. At worst in some cases, they deliberately made the record sound like shit.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Some great ones there. You should check out the Quadrophenia Blu Ray, Close to the Edge DVD-A and Wish You Were Here SACD if you like those albums

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

As an aside.

If Metallica's "death magnetic" was ever released on dvd-a (or bluray-audio) without the the crappy "loud" mastering, I would have bought it. (Regardless of whether it was stereo or surround sound).

(IIRC, Metallica's black album was released on dvd-a).

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

if drum n bass is your thing - LTJ Bukem's 'Planet Earth' in 6.1 sound is great

http://creamusic.net/uploads/posts/2...8424_front.jpg

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

I can't play music very loud in the car if at all (part of the way my brain works) but I have a few quadraphonic sampler 8-track tapes that originally came with Ford cars that are great. There's an interesting story about how these tapes were made after quad had already bit the dust- Ford bought a ton of quadraphonic players from RCA and had enough to install in cars for years, then when quad tapes disappeared from stores they demanded RCA produce some tapes to go with their excess players. They have some stuff that was never released anyplace else, like a weird electronic version of the Star Wars theme.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

More generally, I don't listen to loud music anymore (independent of musical genre). For some strange reason, these days I get massive headaches whenever I listen to any loud music.

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

That sounds like a very Ford thing to do on their cars.:lol:

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

BTW for those interested, if you like ripping DTS cds, Poweriso is by far the most useful program i have come accross. It nicely rips DTS Cds into individual DTS-Wav files with no quality loss. It's the only program i have found which rips DTS Cds without converting. Kinda like doing a 'direct stream copy' in virtualdub

My bluray player plays dvdrs full of DTS-Wavs, i can fit around 100 on a dvdr so lots of quality music on one disc :)

I like ripping the cds because often i dont like every song

Re: Why didn't DTS/Surround Sound music take off ?
 

Wait, that math doesn't make sense. A DTS-CD stores data at the same bitrate as an audio CD (1,411 kbit/s), so a single-layer DVD should only hold about 6.7 completely full CDs. Even if the average album length is less than 80 minutes you're still only likely to fit a dozen or so on one 4.7GB DVDR:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.1_Music_Disc