Atmos or DTS - THAT is the question

[audioguy123]

I'm still confused on the issue of a given 4K release (in this case the original "Transformers" movie) being available in Atmos on both disc AND a streaming service (Apple) in 4K Atmos but from the K store it is 4K and DTS-HD 5.1. And that movie has been available for a very long time. How can K blame the studios when both disc and streaming offerings support Atmos?

As an aside, the DTS-HD K version audio on this disc is REALLY great, and using the Neural-X up-mixer sounds as good as or better than the Atmos version.

 

[andy]

Unfortunately, K is at the mercy of what the studios offer them. They always want (and undoubtedly request) the best, but sometimes the studios just don’t go out of their way for the smallest fish in the pond.

Luckily, what K offers is lossless which is far superior (IMHO) to the lossy tracks offered on the streaming services. It is easy to get caught up in the trendy marketing terms, but at the end of the day, I’m more concerned with getting more bits.

Andy


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[audioguy123]

Unfortunately, K is at the mercy of what the studios offer them. They always want (and undoubtedly request) the best, but sometimes the studios just don’t go out of their way for the smallest fish in the pond.

Luckily, what K offers is lossless which is far superior (IMHO) to the lossy tracks offered on the streaming services. It is easy to get caught up in the trendy marketing terms, but at the end of the day, I’m more concerned with getting more bits.

Andy


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is the answer I expected. In this particular case, the DTS:HD track from K upsampled via Neural-X sound "better" than does the Atmos track I have on disc.

 

[cinelife]

We would all like that answer to change at some point, and clearly some folks are bothered by it more than others, but it is what it is until the content owners provide K with the same digital files they provide to others. I don't know what it takes to get equal treatment in that regard, but I do know K wants the same thing we all want, and that's the best possible experience for owners of their products, and buyers of the content available in the Kaleidescape Store.

I do acknowledge that on some level it's strange that there would be multiple digital versions of a movie issued by the content owner. It is illogical to me. I get that they may, by contract, allow a vendor advanced access to a particular movie for a period of time before others get access, but once distribution begins for everyone else you'd think they'd use one (the best) version available for all. It doesn't make sense to me to have multiple versions (apparently).

The only way you can logically blame K here is if they are given the option to have the better version, and decline for financial reasons (i.e. the Atmos version costs more money), and to my knowledge that has never been the case.

@audioguy123, thanks for the Neural-X comment, hadn't thought to use that in those cases.

Jim

 

[erixon1138]

Another question on the same theme.

I have a lot of 4K disc's that I like to get rid of but I kept some since K misses out on the DTS:X on these titles. It's so convenient to choose movies in the Kaleidescape so I forget about the 20 movies I kept.
Has anyone made a comparison of these titles
Bourne movies
Mummy movies
Jurassic movies
and like all other that's missing DTS:X in the store.

As for the DTS-HD sound on the Transformers, I can't find a single disc release that has that track so very hard to find reviews on that. So can it be the track for "real" cinema that K got from the studio. They say they offer K the best there is and that track probably is even more Immersive then the Dolby Atmos track.

 

[audioguy123]

Repeat of what I noted above:

One of the things that held me back from buying into K was the Atmos unavailability on some of the K discs. While it would be really nice if they had them all, we did an A/B comparison of one of the Transformer movies from disc (Atmos) and K (DTS). We BOTH preferred the impressiveness of the up-sampled (using Neural-X) of the DTS version. YMMV but it was not and has not been, a huge deal to me, in my theater. (Hence, I bought into the K eco-system).

 

[Mossback]

The atmos track for Transforms is up sampled; in 2007 it was a native 5.1 recording or whatever the theater equivalent was at the time. On my Trinnov I prefer to use Auro3D, the results are terrific on any 5.1 source. I would suggest then you are not missing anything by not having it pre up sampled for you.

 

[Sonus]

The atmos track for Transforms is up sampled; in 2007 it was a native 5.1 recording or whatever the theater equivalent was at the time. On my Trinnov I prefer to use Auro3D, the results are terrific on any 5.1 source. I would suggest then you are not missing anything by not having it pre up sampled for you.

Spot on, true Atmos track will always be better vs 5.1 upsampled no matter how good the upsampler is.