joewho said:
Along the way on this issue, I found out from Kenwood support that the difference between digital and non-digital sound is that non-digital uses the surround speakers about 30% and digital uses the surround speakers 60%.
I wouldn't know, but this sounds reasonable. Depends on how they mixed the soundtrack. Some movies in digital rarely use the rears. These are usually a dissappointment to me. I don't necessarily go for the super load explosions. Many people seem to equate loud nondescript explosions with Dolby Digital. Directional sounds are much more entertaining for me.
The big difference I think is that analog (ProLogic) only has "rear" whereas the digital formats (DD, DTS) have "left rear" and "right rear". I believe there is a "center rear" format now as well, although I don't have it. Also, with analog ProLogic, you can tell "it's kindof coming from the left", etc. With digital, the sound placement can be very precise and very clear. With analog ProLogic you could easily get by putting money into your center and left/right front speakers, and go cheap on the rears, since rears were more or less just ambience. With digital, you want to up the quality if the rears as well, if you can afford it. Also, it's more important to match the sound characteristics of the rears with the fronts. Different "colors" of sound are more evident with digital. But I'm talking somewhat hypocritically here. My fronts and center are very good quality and matched well. My rears are fairly well matched in "color" with the fronts, but they're not of the same quality. They don't have the bass response of the fronts. Many boxed systems these days come with five identical (?) small speakers and a subwoofer. Well matched, but pretty much zilch bass response outside the subwoofer. This works very well for a great majority of movies, where it's not important where that big explosion of bass comes from (precise location). You miss out a bit on something like Saving Private Ryan where the explosions come from different directions, at least in the DTS version they do. But most movies don't have much directional bass AFAIK, so the point is more an academic one than a practical one.
I think the digital sound effect I like most is well done rain, or a good clap of thunder that echoes and trails off in some direction. Fools me every dang time!