Announcing Dolby Audio for high performance audio in Microsoft Edge

Sounds great with my sound bar. The TV and the sound bar are both LG, so Dolby automatically sets up. Sound bar set to 3D, sound everywhere.

BillyBob said:

While I agree with a lot of what you say, if you have a good sound system even mp3s can made to be sound good, Flac is better, but not everything is available in Flac.
As far as movies go, that's another story, but again, you need a very good sound system with a receiver capable of manual adjustments so you can bring the Centre speaker to the front.
Two good movies to test your sound system are Need for Speed and Jurassic Park, if you don't feel like you're there you need a new sound system.

Hi there.

The new Jurassic movie seems to be mixed decently -- but for CLEAR dialog often really OLD movies that you see on say Classic TNT channel etc is often better (even though recording is from 1940's-1960's !!!!). A lot of modern movies I find to make them tolerable is to have the SUB TITLES on (and I'm not hearing impaired either !!!!). I just don't know who trains the sound mixers in Hollywood these days.

As to music --it's everyone's choice - but to me modern Night club music is just so boring and repetitive - basically Thump Thump Thump that I might get more pleasure from a bunch of Road Drills !!! - at least I'd be out in the open.

I'm all in favour of Dolby etc designing really good audio - but I suppose that many people after years of listening to music through those hideous bud ear phones probably would find uncompressed music on expensive reference studio speakers quite strange !!!.

I have yet to see ANY computer audio system --expensive or otherwise that even comes CLOSE to my Music speaker set up. !!

(Some systems are tolerable but most are just variations on the old "Boom Box" theme). A decent sub woofer should be FELT rather than actually heard discretely !! too.

@worldstream

--things like TV sound bars are designed quite differently from typical COMPUTER systems -- usually too the DAC's (Digital to analog converters) in the equipment whether from the TV or any surround sound amplifier have a quality of several orders of magnitude better than almost ANY computer sound card you can care to name. For casual listening decent computers can sound OK but in no way can you compare Computers with decent Sound Bars, high end TV systems, Studio speakers etc etc.

For the "Uninitiated" - Our ears can only hear ANALOG - the sound is created by the speakers vibrating and moving the air in the relevant frequencies. The sound is converted from the Digital recording format to analog which is what we do here in the computer by the DACs in the sound card (built in on motherboard or separate card)..

At RECORDING the reverse process is true (unless you are recording on things like Vinyl with old amplifiers) - the Analog sound is converted to digital via the Analag-Digital DAC. On a computer the quality is not usually very good either so you lose at BOTH ends --recording music in the first place, compressing it say to MP3 and then on the play back device poor DAC's to convert it back again and then to cap it all cheap speakers or 'phones !!! so if your recorded music sounds mushy or whatever you know where to look !!!

Cheers
jimbo

Yeah well I'm pretty sure my system isn't a computer system, the sub alone was over $1200, I can make Mp3s sound pretty good.

BillyBob said:

Yeah well I'm pretty sure my system isn't a computer system, the sub alone was over $1200, I can make Mp3s sound pretty good.

Hi there

Often the problem is the actual SOURCE ENCODING-- Analog has an infinite number of gradations whereas digital is obviously discrete so what the ORIGINAL A/D decoder (analog to digital) has to do is to chop up the original source ("digitise it") (which is usually a complex collection of sine waves) by a technique known as "Fourier Analysis" if you are a mathematician to which is then applied further compression mp3 for example. Your Sound system has to do the reverse process before the signal gets sent to the speakers.
People like Dolby Labs try and arrange their algorithms to produce the best possible sound for the arena's the sound will be listened in (Home, Studio, Cinema etc).

Since obviously there is a sensible limit in the number of "chunks" the A/D and D/A converters can sensibly handle the quality can very enormously and high quality converters are EXPENSIVE - this has nothing to do with the speakers which themselves are another entire issue.

If you plug in a poor source even to the most expensive system you will get poor sound out.

A 2,000,000 USD system will sound probably worse than cheap phones for example if just plugging in an AM Radio source !!!!

A final say on this -- High end (and I mean really High end) ANALOG recording can beat any digital system - but for practical processing power and size - professional digital studios are more than sufficient.

People who want a more in depth discussion on Audio systems etc -- this Forum is very good.

Hydrogenaudio Forums - Portal

Cheers
jimbo

Getting off topic as the issue is that it's not outputing dolby, only pcm

At jimbo45, I disagree with you about computer audio. I am running my computer audio system using WASAPI and my bit perfect output is connected via USB 3.0 to one of these;

Marantz NA8005 Network Enabled DSD DAC at Music Direct

which is in turn connected to my little hi fi.

If you want to know anything about computer audio as a hobby, go here;

Computer Audiophile - CA - Where HiFi and High Tech Converge

gzt7d8 said:

Demo sounded pretty good on my Logitech Z-5500 speakers. When you put them in Movie Effect all channels came alive.

Yes, but that the whole issue, your pc is decoding dolby and outputing left/right etc to your speakers, It's not outputing dolby to those who actually have a external dolby capable system. Thats the issue.

Tepescovir said:

Yes, but that the whole issue, your pc is decoding dolby and outputing left/right etc to your speakers, It's not outputing dolby to those who actually have a external dolby capable system. Thats the issue.

Exactly. In my system I use WASAPI to output bit perfect audio to my external DAC. With this Dolby on Edge, all I can output is a low bitrate PCM that has already been converted from Dolby, I do not get the actual Dolby signal. Something wrong there.

About WASAPI (Windows)

Rocky said:

Exactly. In my system I use WASAPI to output bit perfect audio to my external DAC. With this Dolby on Edge, all I can output is a low bitrate PCM that has already been converted from Dolby, I do not get the actual Dolby signal. Something wrong there.

About WASAPI (Windows)

Hi there

All of this stuff still has to conform to the laws of physics - our ears hear ANALOG signals and so the speakers have to vibrate in such a way as to produce those analog waves .

Now just throw up any sound wave on an "Oscilloscope" or similar device -- you'll see that it has a complex wave form which is a set of SINE WAVES.

Now take any DIGITAL source and try and convert that into the same output that the Natural sound has.

It's not easy -- and it's simply physics.

Anybody who says that an original Analog system can be converted into a digital sound for recording and then converted back into a 100% replica of the original source is just PLAIN LYING -- you can't do it -- it's NOT POSSIBLE - Maths and physics prove it easily.

You can get pretty good stuff -- and to get the ultimate quality is going to be HIDEOUSLY expensive but you can never re-create the original sound source 100% exactly from a digital transformation - especially when TWO are involved -- original recording to digital, then the sound card to decode the digital stuff back into analog for your speaker systems.

I don't need any discussion here - it's simple MATHS 101. !!!!! As to the quality of your equipment that's another issue - but you still can't overcome basic physics -- like the speed of light can't be exceeded whatever you do.

Cheers
jimbo