We’re assuming you know some of the basics–like that 5.1 audio is five channels of audio positioned at centre, front right, front left, back right and back left, and then one subwoofer channel. And that a higher bit rate means more audio data is coming through, which, generally, means it’s higher quality and gonna sound better, since you’re losing less of the original studio sound.

The building block of digital audio is “pulse code modulation”—an old technology used for CDs and everything since. It can be rendered in several resolutions, from 16-bit stuff on CD to 24-bit on newer DVD and higher-res formats. It can also have varying frequency ranges, typically from 44.1KHz to 96KHz. Without going into more detail, you just need to know that PCM is bulky, and it is this PCM data that both DTS and Dolby work to encode into more manageable files. When audio tracks are decoded in a disc player, they are either sent out analogue via multichannel RCA outputs, or they become PCM tracks that any digital receiver can easily interpret.

We’re taking you through the major branded audio formats that you’ll run into if you’re dealing with a home theatre, or hell, a Blu-ray player.

First up: Dolby. There are basically three tiers of audio: Dolby TrueHD at the top, then Dolby Digital Plus, then good old Dolby Digital.

Dolby TrueHD is a lossless compression format that is bit-for-bit identical to the studio masters. It can handle a bit rate of up to 18 megabits per second, and support as many as 14 channels of audio, though you’re more likely to see it at 7.1. It’s actually optional in the Blu-ray spec, but it’s supported by the PS3 and most other new Blu-ray players. Some players decode the TrueHD internally, then stream out uncompressed PCM audio through HDMI, while others can send the TrueHD file itself out over HDMI in bitstream for the receiver to decode.

Dolby Digital Plus is the next step down. It still delivers 7.1 audio, but at a max bit rate of 3Mbps. It’s a more efficient codec than the original Dolby Digital, and is a mandatory minimum in the Blu-ray 1.1 spec. Dolby Digital Plus can be used for Bonus View picture-in-picture audio tracks on a Blu-ray disc, with the main audio track encoded as TrueHD.

Dolby Digital is the lowest rung, at 5.1 audio channels, running at 448Kbps on DVD (though a richer 640Kbps on Blu-ray, used, again for special features or supplement language tracks).

DTS’s offerings follow a similar tiered setup.

DTS-HD Master Audio is at the top. It’s a lossless format that is also bit-for-bit identical to the studio master. It supports a bitrate up to 24Mbps (though the average Blu-ray flick’s audio is only about 2-3Mbps, with 4-5Mbps spikes) and up to eight channels (like 7.1). (It too, is supported by the PS3.)

DTS High Resolution Audio is below that. It also supports eight channels at a constant bit rate of up to 6Mbps. It’s for situations where a studio doesn’t want to eat up disc space with a full lossless track (like bonus features or tracks), though DTS told us 95 percent of studios who use DTS use the full HD Master Audio.

DTS Digital Surround is down at the DVD end, with support for 5.1 channels and bandwidth up to 1.5Mbps, though post-2000 DVDs typically keep the track at 768Kbps to save disc space.

You may have heard a few things about Dolby ProLogic II or IIx, or maybe DTS Neo:6. These aren’t digital codecs, so much as they are “matrix” programs that take stereo tracks and route it to to the different speakers in a surround system. A vestige from pre-digital days, people used to master stereo tracks deliberately for ProLogic—try watching The Simpsons opening credits through your receiver with ProLogic turned on.

Dolby and DTS also have virtual surround technologies that do the opposite of matrixing: They take 5.1 tracks and perform hocus pocus on them so that they sound surround-y, but play through stereo speakers or headphones. It’s more subjective, and has a whole different science to it, so maybe we’ll save it for another time.

That, in a nutshell, is what all of those Dolby and DTS logos on the back your Blu-ray player, A/V receiver or movie box means. If you want to know how “golden-eared” audiophiles feel about the highest qualities, and how well they fare against uncompressed PCM, check out this informative piece from Home Entertainment Magazine. As a rule, DTS HD Master Audio or Dolby TrueHD will kick arse, but unless you have a $50,000 sound system, you may not be able to tell the difference between the middle and top tiers anyway.

Something we missed, or you still wanna know? Send any questions about Dolby, DTS, Dubbly, Dobby or anything else to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

At the press of a button, the Emperor’s tail section (the large articulated arm that holds the monitors) rises to allow the user to be seated, then lowers back into position the three monitors at the perfect height and angle for perfect viewing comfort.

The Emperor has three large monitors for a panoramic view, THX Dolby surround sound, air filtering, light therapy (so you can get a tan without having to go out under the sun,) webcam, battery backup, and other niceties. It can be built to order with a desktop Mac or PC, as well as the biggest docking station ever for laptops. If you want one, you will have to go rob a bank—price is not listed yet, but we can imagine lots of zeros in it—and wait for the release date: July 2008. [Novelquest]

The system “continually monitors (or ‘listens’ to) the audio at all times and performs content-dependent processing…[on] all types of audio.” The processing isn’t just straight-up compression, it’s more of a smart EQ that takes dialogue and music into concern, and adjusts many frequency bands. This has the benefit of keeping funky artifacts out of the process, but it does of course take more horsepower to do, hence the slow roll-out. The first TVs to have it will be Toshiba’s REGZA ZH500 and ZV500 series LCD HDTVs, which will be out in Japan next month. No word yet on the US (or AU) arrival.

In case you’re wondering, Dolby Volume does have an advanced “night” mode that lets you hear everything in big epic films without waking the significant other kind enough to put up with your midnight epic marathons. That’s all we know for now—when it hits the US (hopefully this year) we’ll test it with American broadcast TV, a boatload of DVDs and Blu-rays, and an iPod, to see for ourselves how it fixes those nagging problems. [FAQ via Press Release]

The Skinny: The YSP uses forty 1-inch drivers individually powered and controlled to steer sound beams. This is based off the same tech that subs use to steer radar.There are two midbass speakers, too. Secondly, this unit has 2 HDMI inputs and one output, as well as the usual connections. It also upscales standard def to HD, and new to this model are concert hall modes developed from acoustics from real performance venues all over the world. There’s an XM and iPod dock port, too. Calibration is done via an included microphone in less than 5 minutes. Sound is big and clear and I almost can forgo the sub. Voices were convincingly strong and even, and only above the din of the Tom Cats in the Top Gun HD-DVD pumped full volume did the speaker crackle.

The Problems: The soundbar can be table or wall mounted, but as with previous generations, if you table mount, you block part of most TVs (see shot in galleries). Speaker won’t fit in most cabinets (too long) and doesn’t correctly throw surround when placed on the ground (center channel too low to throw believable voices in movies). Here’s another placement catch: I put my TVs on a wide wall. Most people put the TV where they have a lot of width, yes? Well the right and left channels grow increasingly weak as the room gets wider: The manual asks for a room no more than 23 feet wide. I have a room like this, so the discreetness of the channels was greatly diminished. Interestingly enough: when I stood to one side, those beams became much more intense.

The Verdict: Loud and clear and highly directional under the right conditions. The best soundbar I’ve ever tested. Great for a room within the recommended dimensions of 23 feet on each side, but still difficult to place under a TV unless you are wall mounting. But expensive at $1799, too. I’d get one simply because I hate wires just that much.

Unlike past YSP setups, this 4th generation is so good, out of the dozen or so demonstrators, from sound engineers to casual listeners, all sorts of CEDIA audio nerds were satisfied by the directionality of the sound beams. Each is so discreet, even in the demo room’s open top and back, all that could be seen were the heads of the audience nodding in approval. I love this thing, and I’d even be willing to place the tallish speaker in front of my table mounted LCD, blocking the bottom few inches of my picture. That’s a bit crazy, I know, but I’m impressed. For more details, hit our last post.

The Spin Those of y’all with massive subwoofers, or at least a passing familiarity with the THX sound tests of yore, know the deal: Dolby Digital bestows a fat, loud bottom end to any cinematic soundtrack. Yes, even the beating of tiny bee’s wings sounds awesome in Dolby Digital, which gives you every reason to look for the brand name when you shop for your next HD DVD and/or Blu-ray player. (It’s usually emblazoned on the upper right corner of the faceplate, Joe Q. Public.) Because that’s what this promo is really about—getting the next generation of consumers accustomed to the concept of Dolby technologies being the be-all and end-all of audio perfection. As they say in the ad biz, if you win a customer’s loyalty before the age of 16, you’ve got ‘em for hooked life.

Counterspin It’s no accident, though, that Dolby’s latching its brand-building promo to a movie with obvious cross-cultural appeal. Judging by the transcript of Dolby Labs’ Q3 conference call, the moneymen are wondering how the company will ensure that the digital cinemas of the developing world—especially those in India and China—come to rely on Dolby 3D, which is ostensibly the company’s future cash cow. Despite its apparent digi-audio hegemony, Dolby is actually at something of a crossroads—a few years hence, digital projection will be the rule in cinemas worldwide, and the company wants to make sure it’s got a jump on selling to vendors who’ll be making the transition from celluloid. Never mind that the real money is to be made in the home market—theaters continue to be the glamour realm, so that’s where Dolby has to ensure that its brand remains strong.

Takeaway Love him or hate him, John C. Dvorak recently made a sharp observation regarding Dolby Labs: on your first Walkman, the noise reduction technology was pointedly called Dolby noise reduction. Yes, the company that Ray Dolby built has been aggressively branding itself for decades now, for the express purpose of making sure that consumers look for the Dolby name when purchasing third-party audio equipment (and thus ensuring that licensing fees remain fat). That seems to be the real money-maker for that company, as opposed to licensing for professional cinema. But just as kids are more likely to purchase a sneaker if it’s endorsed by Michael VickGilbert Arenas, consumers are more likely to buy an HD DVD that prominently boasts a technology trumpeted at the local megaplex. This may seem like a trifling point nowadays, given that no one in their right mind would buy a player that can’t support the AC-3 codec. But, hey, it’s never too early to start worrying about 2018, right?

Hype-O-Meter 7 (out of 10). Dolby’s on a roll, and this is a surefire brand builder in the U.S. But will cinemas in the developing world really pay for Dolby 3D, or are the Lords of Guangdong already developing lower-cost alternatives for digital cinema? Branding works best, after all, when the margins between the “real deal” and the knock-off are pretty thin. Make that margin too wide, and cinema operators in Golmud won’t become devoted customers.

Brendan I. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a columnist for both The New York Times and Slate. His Hype Sheet column appears every Thursday on Gizmodo.

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No word on who makes the upscaler, but I notice that their new flagship receiver uses a not so great scaler by the usually high-end Anchorbay.

But back to audio. Those speakers all coordinated by a DSP, and by tweaking delay and volume, convincingly eliciting sweeping surround audio that seems to come from all 360 degrees, and then some. There are “seven Cinema DSP programs (three movie, three music and one sports)” and “Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS Neo:6,” all of which are selectable via the remote and on screen display or LCD. The YSP-4000 is iPod and XM ready and goes for $US1800. Then there’s a YSP-3000 and YSP-900, which only have 21 beam drivers, two midbass speakers. It has the same surround format compatibility, and the YSP-3000 has 2 HDMI inputs/outputs, but no analogue upscaling. (The YSP-3000 is iPod/XM ready, btw.) Oh, like the YSP-4000, you’ll still need a subwoofer to go along with these things, which is Yamaha released a slim, downward firing models:

Yamaha is also debuting two new subwoofers, the YST-FSW150 (130w; $US279.95 MSRP) and YST-FSW050 (100w; $US199.95 MSRP), with slim, rack-mountable, down-firing active designs that work perfectly to give its new YSP systems extra low-end audio presence. The YST-FSW150 and YST-FSW050 both have minimal heights of 5 15/16-inches and 6 7/16-inches, respectively, that make them ideal for rooms and installations with space limitations. They both feature the company’s latest proprietary Yamaha Active Servo Technology II (YST II), which provides extremely stable performance and high sound pressure levels that result in natural and energetic bass reproduction and linear ports for minimising extraneous noise.

The YSP line is my favourite, despite the inability to table mount without blocking the bottom portion of a TV. Can’t wait to hear these at CEDIA.

LATEST DIGITAL SOUND PROJECTORS OFFER HDMI, VIDEO UPSCALING, iPOD COMPATIBILITY, FM TUNER AND ADVANCED LISTENING SETTINGS

–Three New Models Enhance Market-Leading Single Component Surround Sound Solutions; New Entry-Level YAS-70 Features Exclusive Air Surround(TM) Technology –

BUENA PARK, Calif.–Yamaha, the innovator in home theater and digital audio and video reproduction, today unveiled the YSP-4000, YSP-3000 and the YSP-900 Digital Sound Projectors, each of which provides true multi-channel surround sound from a single component that can easily be installed underneath a flat-panel television. All of these units provide true surround sound performance by focusing audio signals into precisely controlled and directed “beams” that keep consumers from having to install numerous speakers throughout a room. Members of the press are invited to experience the new systems at CEDIA 2007 in Denver, Colorado, at Yamaha’s booth (#450), between September 5 and 9.

The top-of-the-line YSP-4000 sets a new standard in single component surround sound and home theater installation capabilities. It features 40 beam drivers, two built-in subwoofers, 42 corresponding digital amplifiers, seven Cinema DSP programs (three movie, three music and one sports), analog to HDMI video upscaling, high definition video upscaling to 1080i/720p and advanced custom installation compatibility. The YSP-3000 and YSP-900 both feature 21 built-in beam drivers and two built-in woofers, with 23 corresponding digital amplifiers and three Cinema DSP modes, but the YSP-3000 also includes a 1080p (24Hz and 60Hz) compatible HDMI interface with two inputs and one output to facilitate pure digital connections with the latest home theater components.

The YSP-4000 and YSP-3000 are fully XM Satellite Radio ready with XM HD surround sound powered by Neural Surround. An integrated FM tuner further broadens the user’s entertainment choices. The YSP-4000 and YSP-3000 also offer iPod compatibility via the optional YDS-10 dock. Once docked, the iPod can be operated (song selection, play, etc.) via the YSP’s remote control and on-screen display. Yamaha’s proprietary Compressed Music Enhancer technology compensates for the lost detail of audio that is compressed during the “ripping” process, recapturing the essence of the original recording.

All three models create a wider soundstage than previous Digital Sound Projectors, to fill the whole room with convincing surround sound regardless of where listeners are seated. The YSP-4000 and YSP-3000 offer two all-new modes: 5-Channel Stereo and My Surround. To accommodate even the most difficult installation environments where walls may not be present or are covered with unsuitable materials, My Surround mode provides surround sound without needing to reflect the beams off walls.

Each model offers additional sound settings, including 5-Beam Mode, 3-Beam Mode, Stereo+3-Beam Mode, Stereo Mode and My Beam Mode, which allows users to focus sound to a specific position in the room to avoid disturbing others. Yamaha’s proprietary IntelliBeam(TM) automated system calibration enables users to quickly and easily set up each system for the optimal listening experience and intuitive, multi-language on-screen displays.

All three systems offer full support for surround sound standards, including Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Pro Logic II and DTS Neo:6. Each also features Yamaha CINEMA DSP technology to create realistic soundscapes in any room. For late night movie and music enjoyment, a Night Listening Enhancer mode that allows dialog and quiet passages to be heard clearly, even at low volumes. Moreover, a TV Equal Volume mode prevents sudden bursts of sound from TV programs and commercials.

All three of the new models feature SRS TruBass technology to provide exceptionally deep and rich bass response, and a subwoofer output to accommodate one of Yamaha’s new slim design subwoofers (YST-FSW150 and YST-FSW50) for clean, rich bass reproduction.

The YSP-4000 ($1,799.95 MSRP) will be available in October and the YSP-3000 ($1,199.95 MSRP) and YSP-900 ($899.95 MSRP) will be available in August. The SPM-K30, a new YSP bracket which is adjustable for use with all three models, will also be available in August for $79.95 MSRP. For wall-mounting applications, an optional 15-foot cable (YDS-CBL15) for the Yamaha YDS-10 iPod dock will also be available for $49.95 MSRP.

Slim Subwoofers Offer Ideal Complement to YSP Models

Yamaha is also debuting two new subwoofers, the YST-FSW150 (130w; $279.95 MSRP) and YST-FSW050 (100w; $199.95 MSRP), with slim, rack-mountable, down-firing active designs that work perfectly to give its new YSP systems extra low-end audio presence. The YST-FSW150 and YST-FSW050 both have minimal heights of 5-15/16-inches and 6-7/16-inches, respectively, that make them ideal for rooms and installations with space limitations. They both feature the company’s latest proprietary Yamaha Active Servo Technology II (YST II), which provides extremely stable performance and high sound pressure levels that result in natural and energetic bass reproduction and linear ports for minimizing extraneous noise.