Dolby Widthdraws Upmixing Restrictions: A Win for Consumers?

netmask · Post by **netmask** » Thu Aug 29, 2019 18:00

https://www.audioholics.com/audio-techn ... -consumers?

MrQuade · Post by **MrQuade** » Thu Aug 29, 2019 18:08

Upmixing to virtual speakers smells a lot like the audio equivalent of video motion smoothing which I am not a fan of.

The the content author did not deliberately encode that height/wide data into the stream, then messing with the audio to produce virtual channels doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

I'm not sure what the article author means by this

It's also very good news for soundbar products that don't decode Dolby streams but can upmix to DTS:X. I consider this a WIN for consumers.

If the soundbar product can't decode Dolby, then what data is it upmixing? Also, what soundbar product *can't* decode Dolby??

netmask · Post by **netmask** » Fri Aug 30, 2019 09:35

It does smack of "converting mono to stereo" that was fashionable for a time decades ago. However starting with a multichannel source you can do quite a bit. Not for the audio purist. On a couple of Sydney TV stations fake surround is often pumped out - I switch my amp to stereo to get rid of the distortion. In one case there was an old documentary that I did the original mix - it was mono and the original tracks had long been erased. There it was coming out of surround and repackaged.....

prl · Post by **prl** » Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:04

Sounds like a classic case of people who should know better confusing "can" with "should"

Anyway, it's a problem that I'd like to have. Nothing, as far as I can tell, is broadcast with more than two audio channels in Canberra.