Dolby Digital

The best way to enhance the audio quality of your home theater system is to rely them on a Dolby Digital surround sound system. When it comes to audio, no doubt the first name that pops out into a person’s thought is Dolby Digital.

Dolby Digital has been relied to a lot of homeowners, theaters, and the likes, worldwide. Being the world leader in the marketing of the lossy audio compressions, Dolby Laboratories, the makers of Dolby Digital, has designed different versions of digital surround sound systems. There are six versions of Dolby Digital today—the Dolby Digital, the Dolby Digital EX, the Dolby Digital Live, the Dolby Digital Surround EX, the Dolby Digital Plus, and the Dolby TrueHD.

Dolby Digital- Also known as the AC-3, this is the most common versions that contain six discrete sound channels, five of which are for regular range speakers. The format of the Dolby digital supports both stereo and mono usages. The film, first to use this Dolby Digital technology was the movie Batman Returns in the summer of 1992. The laser disc versions of Harrison Ford’s movie, Clear and Present Danger, featured the first Home Theater Dolby Digital Mix in the year 1995.

Dolby Digital EX- This version of Dolby Digital similarly practice the ones used in the Dolby’s Pro-logic format. EX basically adds extensions to the original 5.1 channel Dolby Digital codec in forms of matrixed rear channels, thus creating a 6.1 or 7.1 channel outputs. However, its format is not actually considered a true digital 7.1 or 6.1 channel codec since it lacks capabilities in supporting discrete 6th channels, unlike its rival DTS-ES codec.

Dolby Digital Live- This is considered a real-time encoding technology basically for interactive media like video games. It generally converts any known audio signals on a personal computer or game console into a 5.1 channel format of Dolby Digital, and then transports it thru a single SPDIF cable. Soundstorm, used as an Xbox game console, along with the nForce2-based personal computers, use early forms of this technology. Dolby Digital Live is available in a sound card from manufacturers like the Auzentech that use the C-Media chipsets, like Turtle Beach. Likewise, this is also available on motherboards with codecs like the Realtek;s ALC882D, or the ALC888DD and the ALC888H. Similar technologies called the DTS connect is also available from a competitor named DTS. One important benefits with regards to this technology is that the DDL can enable uses of digital multichannel sounds with user sound cards, and are sometimes limited to a PCM stereo and a multichannel analog.

Dolby Digital Surround EX- Developed by Lucasfilm THX and Dolby, the Dolby Digital Surround EX was specially designed for the launching of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom of the Menace on May 1999. This technology provides economical means of a 5.1 soundtrack to carry a spare, center back channel to further improve localization effects. The said extra channel is basically matrix encoded to both the discrete right and left surround channeled of a 5.1 mix. Results are played without losing information on a standard 5.2 system, or even if it is play on a 6.1 or 7.1 system that is equipped with a Surround EX additional and decoding speakers.

Dolby Digital Plus- Another version of a Dolby Digital sound is the Dolby Digital plus. It is called the E-AC-3 based from the AC-3 codec. This technology offers increase bitrates of up to 6.144 Mbit/s, supports extra audio channels, and enhanced coding techniques to lessen compression artifacts.

Dolby TrueHD- This is a technology that features an advanced lossless audio codec that is based on the Meridian Lossless Packing. This technology supports those extensive metadata, including the dialog normalizations and Dynamic Range controls.

After discussing the different versions of Dolby Digital, isn’t it just great to have a lot of options for your home theater system?