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Digital Theater Sound- Extended Surround

DTS-ES stands for Digital Theater Sound- Extended Surround, and includes two variants, DTS-ES Matrix and DTS-ES Discrete 6.1. This depends on the original mastering and storage of the sound. With a discretely recorded (nonmatrixed) center-surround channel, DTS-ES Discrete provides 6.1 discrete channels while the two rear-center speakers play in mono, in home theater systems with a 7.1 configuration.

DTS-ES works on a matrix system where processors compatible with the ES codec recognize “flags” built into the audio coding and “unfold” the rear-center sound from data. This rear-center sound is otherwise sent to rear surround speakers. This is also known as DTS-ES 5.1. Sometimes DTS-ES data is encoded with a discrete sixth audio channel and not embedded or matrixed among other channels. It is then known as DTS-ES 6.1.

The discrete sixth channel can be recognized by ES-capable processors and played back if connected to the required speakers. Dolby’s EX codec that competes with DTS-ES can only handle matrixed data and not support the discrete sixth channel.

DTS-ES is backward-compatible with standard DTS setups. This makes the sound play back in the standard 5.1 with non-ES equipments that do not recognize the flags or with ES-enabled equipments lacking the extra speaker connections. However, very few DVD tiles have been released with DTS-ES Discrete. The center-rear/surround channel is encoded and decoded in a way similar to that of the center-front. Any surround sound processor can be used to decode the center surround channel, by feeding the left and right surround signals into the processor inputs.