Dolby Sound

The Dish Network and Directv audio that you will receive is 100% digital CD-quality and your music channels will not have commercials! These systems are also compatible with your home-theater or surround-sound systems that use the "Dolby Digital" sound format. Read below for some more information about Dolby Digital sound.

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What is Dolby Digital?

Dolby Digital gives you 6 completely separate sound channels. Much like Pro Logic Dolby Surround, it has right, center and left channels that span the front of a room. Dolby Surround gives a single limited bandwidth of 100 Hz to 7,000 Hz surround channel and this is usually played back in the room via 2 amplification channels and 2 separate speakers.

Dolby Digital gives separate right surround and left surround channels. This is good for more localized sounds and a greater degree of realistic ambience. Also, with Dolby Digital, all 5 main channels give a complete range (3 Hz to 20,000 Hz). If desired, you could add a subwoofer to each channel. The 6th channel, which is the low frequency effects channel, can have additional bass information which will greatly enhance the effect of scenes such as crashes, explosions and other dramatic events. This channel is sometimes referred to as the ".1" channel. This is because it has only a limited frequency response (3 Hz to 120 Hz). When you add it to the 5 channels thath have a full range, the Dolby Digital system is considered to have "5.1" channels.

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All six channels in the Dolby system are digital. This means that they can be transferred from the producer's mixing console to the playback system in your home without loss. The nice feature of this is that Dolby Digital loads all 6 channels into much less space than for a single channel that a compact disc would require. This compacting of the digital audio data is how Dolby Digital laser disc soundtracks can be added to a conventional laser disc.

Why is Dolby Digital a "Good Thing"?

One of the things that make Dolby Digital a good thing is that it uses a "shared bit pool" arrangement in conjunction with a form of human auditory masking. This makes it use the data that is transmitted in the most efficient way possible. These 'bits' of data are distributed to the various bands of narrow frequency which have been described above. The distribution of data is different for each case so as to be enabling for the spectrum of frequency or the dynamic nature of the program that is being coded. Applying the form of auditory masking makes for a solid probability that enough bits can be used in describing the audio signal for each of the bands. These bits are distributed throughout the separate channels in this form of transfer as well. This makes it so that the channels that have a greater frequency content will have a demand for a greater amount of data than the lightly occupied channels. In other words, the more robust sounds in one channel can mask the noise that occurs in the other channels. The end result is that Dolby Digital will use a greater amount of the transmitted data proportionally to be able to represent the audio. This makes for a higher sound quality and allows your surround sound with multi-channel capabilities to be encoded with less of a bit rate than would be needed for only one channel on a CD.

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