HD sound, questions.

[NoobageEncoder]

So, I love Bluray because of lossless sound. I have some what of a nice 5.1. polk monitor 60 in front, monitor 40s in the back.

After reading, learning about transcoding, finding some of my show only have lossless 2.0, learning about how humans perceive loudness of sound as quality, and how handbrake and some codecs do sound normalization; I am left with few big unanswered questions.

I have read people say they cant tell different froms DTS vs DTSHD, DD+ Vs DD TureHD. Its dependent on ones ears and equipment. I do know base hits harder, and it sounds louder to me with the lossless atleast that I can recall.

Are there ways to encode Lossless that make it better than DTS but not the same bitrate as say DTSHD. Kinda like video 30Mbps down to 8Mpbs hard to see difference. Or CD to 360Kbps.

Is there a site that you can look movies up on to see if the surround sound is heavy on the front stage but not the rear, or if the Lossless is any better than lossy. Like when I go see a 3d movie I always look up if its worth getting 3d. Cinemablend ranks 3d #/5 in a few areas, I use this to pick if i go to 2d or 3d.

The goal here is to have the best sound perceivable to me but at a storage savings as they do eat up the space. If the savings comes from encoding or just using DTS vs DTSHD cause it has been reviewed by someone more knowledgeable than me that says not worth DTSHD.

Last question, is two fold, here is the example:
Speed racer 1967 series on bluray. Its sound is 2.0 DD tureHD. down mixing this to stereo and tossing the TureHd would save some space, but would it take a quality hit?

also when downmixing to stereo when you have DTS 5.1, DTSHD 5.1, ac3 2.0, do you get better quality if you downmix from the lossless?

As you can see I am full of question, it steams from OCD Thanks for your time and effort.

[Woodstock]

Consider this; Speed Racer was broadcast in mono. The stereo TrueHD on the BD is not original. The same for Star Trek: The Original Series, originally broadcast in mono, but sporting a DTS-HD 5.1 channel soundtrack on the BD.

What does THAT do to your OCD?

For me, I chose stereo AC3 on the ST:TOS encodes, because it sounds better on my system. I'm not going to freak out over loss of fidelity at frequencies the original broadcast didn't even include.

[NoobageEncoder]

Thats my point. I have not seen them yet, so if they made it better or more true to what the director or story writer was going for I think the updated version maybe better, But that leaves to question are they still alive to say yes that what i was going for.

you point out the next bluray I will get getting. Seems people are having fits about color shifts in the original series too.

The quest for better video and sound and triggered OCD hardcore and its not as simple as i was hopping when started getting all this blurays and my WD red HDDS.

[Woodstock]

If you were raised on analog broadcast TV, going to video tape was a step up. DVD improved upon the resolution of tape, to where it was possible to see bad editing. BD makes bad editing more obvious, and UHD makes it painfully obvious.

My benchmark is, "Is the story being depicted good enough to keep you engaged, or is it so boring that you're counting out-of-place pixels to stay entertained?" If not, what's the point of more resolution?

[NoobageEncoder]

I am 33 years old. This is requiring a great deal of thinking, but I am learning so much along this journey. My goal is to have best looking quality of shows I want to see and share with my kids, and to see all these TV series I never got to watch in order etc. My Quality is still being defined. Seems film grain is causing my brain some issues, still trying to figure out sound.

We just bought our first home, and as if internet speeds where not bad enough before, now we are metered unit I come up with the money to have dsl/cable line ran to the house, We are out in the country. So I am out with a mission to make a in home steaming server.

Woodstock, do you do anime? if so what do think about the fact that most of them are 2.0 but when released dubbed they bump it to 5.1.

I am trying to make my mind up on bluray vs dvd on anime's from funimation. I know if its 2.0 stereo I don't mind sitting back 12ft from the screen and for ex: dragonball supper dvd vs bluray looks no different on my screen from there but sound thats another story. If its 5.1 I set 6ft for speaker placement. Used dvd are cheap for anime when a bluray is on the market. You get what I am saying? This too many decisions for one man to make XD.

Thanks for all the time reading and chatting back and forth.

[Woodstock]

Considering that I have over 600 individual series (current count), yes, I "do" anime. And I really don't bother with the 5.1 audio, because it's almost always quite muted vs. the AC3 stereo (because AC3 usually gets compressed to MAKE it louder) and LPCM audio of the original.

There are reasons to have 5.1 and higher sound tracks for people who have the audio equipment to handle them. But, if you're viewing on a tablet, as I often do, the sound system isn't going to give you much for the extra channels, because they didn't put more than two speakers in the box.

But, that's just me. I have computers older than you. I'm used to lo-fidelity.