Peter Gabriel "Play" DVD--issue with DTS surround

Over at Peter Gabriel's forum, there was a thread about a mis-authored DTS audio option on the Play DVD. With some DTS decoders, the output of the DTS audio is something like -30dB lower than the stereo or Dolby 5.1 Surround options. I did some checking here--with a Pioneer DV578A, taking the audio from the analog 5.1 outputs, the DTS audio was indeed much lower in level than Dolby 5.1 (IOW, using the player's decoder). Through a Pioneer receiver with a DTS decoder, the DTS and Dolby 5.1 levels were the same.

The orignal post at PG's forum used a Denon A/V receiver and noticed the DTS problem. They seem to think it might be tied to a certain DTS decoder chip, along with a new DTS authoring system that uncovered the issue with this chip.

Anyone else notice this?

 

Wow Rudy! Ironic...a buddy here at work just got a surround system, so I made him a DVD-R comp of some surround stuff, and he complained the PG stuff (all from Play) is quieter than the rest! It works fine on my system (my 45a does the decoding), so it must be an issue with certain decorders.

 

The original issue was with the Denon AVR-3805.

 

Ha! He has a Denon receiver!

 

I haven't tried it in my 45A yet, since I don't have the TV hooked up to it anymore. I will probably get the same results as you, then.

The 578A and the Pioneer receiver are the same vintage, so it's interesting to find out that the player doesn't decode it at proper volume, but the receiver does! (And the receiver does have a DTS logo that lights up with an incoming DTS digital signal, so I know that's working correctly.) Probably different decoder chips in each one.

 

Here's the previous thread. See World Of Genesis post.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=45319&highlight=avr-3805

 

Interesting. I have this DVD and I haven't noticed any drop in volume on the DTS track. In fact it's quite loud IMO. I have a Yamaha receiver on my home theater system. A lot of the 5.1 mixes are strikingly different from the original 2-track stereo versions.

 

looks like it's a Denon problem.