Audio Video News

Back in September, DTS announced that Pioneer and Denon were planning to be the first companies to incorporating the new 96kHz/24-bit high resolution surround sound technology in their flagship A/V receivers. It would appear the companies have made good on that promise, with some help from integrated circuit manufacturer Analog Devices.

Analog Devices announced last week the availability to manufacturers of what it is calling the industry's first digital audio decoder for DTS's 96/24 5.1-channel high resolution audio format for DVD-Video. DTS claims to be the first to have developed 96/24 technology for 5.1 channel surround sound, while still allowing for full-motion video, on a DVD-Video disc.

According to Analog Devices, its Melody DTS 96/24 decoder enables installed DVD-Video players to deliver multi-channel sound at a 96kHz sampling rate and 24-bit word length, along with full-motion video. The company adds, "When encoded in the video zone of DVD-Audio discs, DTS 96/24 delivers 96/24 audio resolution on any existing DVD-Video player, eliminating the need for a separate DVD-Audio player." DTS says that the 96/24 soundtracks, on either DVD-Video or DVD-Audio, are fully backward compatible with existing DTS decoders, which will read and output a 48kHz signal.

Analog Devices says the Melody DTS 96/24 decoder has now been certified by DTS and currently designed into new A/V receivers from Denon (Model AVR-4802 and AVC-A11SR, which also use Analog Devices' AD1854K 96kHz/24-bit DACs) and Pioneer (Models VSX-49TX and VSX-47TX). The company adds that the SHARC DSP-based decoder additionally decodes DTS-ES Discrete 6.1 in each of these A/V receiver models.

The companies predict that "as the entertainment industry moves towards archiving material in 96/24 high resolution, the number of movies and music releases utilizing 96/24 on DVD-Video is expected to grow dramatically in the coming years." DTS publicly introduced 96kHz/24-bit high resolution for use on DVD-Video and DVD-Audio discs earlier this year at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) conference in Amsterdam.