Random thoughts: Before I bought into bluray, I was excited as anyone about the lossless formats. When I tried lossy vs lossless at first, I was disappointed. Admittedly, they were only the briefest of tests on a couple of titles. After that, I always figured that maybe I'll get something out of the lossless formats, but I wasn't going to compare anymore, and just select the best track available to me.
Now, TrueHD sometimes really bugs me. It can't be set as default as with MA (or maybe it can, but it usually isn't anyways). I never know whether the auto flagged DRC vs defeated DRC is supposed to be better. I don't know if dialnorm was too screwed up.
Anyways, so I played with the DRC settings, after a fellow consumer that I trust believed that this one had better surround envelopment with leaving the DRC on. While playing around, I decided to listen, for a good while in fact, the lossy version.
Man, just the dialogue alone was a huge difference.
Which leads me to ask: Why didn't I head such differences before with other titles?
1. Could it be that the other titles had mixes where lossless never really benefitted them, but DK did?
2. The difference in the quality of mixes on DK is greater than what exists on other titles?
3. I would expect that any title would offer the best mix they could for BOTH the lossy and lossless tracks, but is there a possibility that they either shafted the lossy track in order to promote lossless and all the necessary gear associated, or perhaps they just did not care to spend any time on the lossy track as they were too involved and wanted to give their TrueHD track the best care they could?
Its impossible to compare lossy vs lossless tracks precisely because the mixes are different. Correct?
Whether its solely dependent on the mix, or not, my opinion/viewpoint on the matter has shifted more greatly on the side of lossless codecs. This is definitely different about how I felt up to this point. Cheers.
