BS.  The technology is 20+ years old.

The audiophile version of "Get off my lawn!"


I visited DTS when I was in LA and they make no claims of doing something particularly novel.  What the engineers said was, "Our approach is not really innovative, but it is exhaustive." Basically, it's just generic HRTFs for 11.1 channels, but very carefully engineered HRTFs.

The demo is amazingly convincing...of course demos are by their very nature set-up to put the best light on the product, but it WAS damned good.  In the article they say "cheap headphones" but what they're using is the HD239---a very good headphone; it's on my Wall of Fame. What they don't tell you (unless you're there for a private demo and can talk with the engineers) is that they've measured the headphones carefully and fully characterized them, and they've pre-compensated for them. So when you go from the speakers to the headphones they sound EXACTLY the same. Good stuff, but they're doing a lot of math to make it work.

They, however, have not measure a lot of headphones and the current app gives you the choice of over-ear, on-ear, and in-ear headphones. Those setting have some general compensations, but they're not headphone specific. (Well, the on-ear is the HD 239, so if you have a pair of those it works well.) They are still figuring out what will really work for the product. Mostly they envision it as a smartphone/tablet product.  They think they'll be measuring a bunch of headphones and then put a "DTS Headphone-X Approved" sticker on it and you'll be able to pick it from a dropdown list.

"not innovative but exhaustive"

Sounds interesting - in other words, a good [size=78%]implementation [/size]of the technology.


It just so happens my wife loved the music to Man of Steel. I'll have to grab the Limited Edition to check it out.

YEah, sort of, they know they can't control the ear they're playing to, so they just use some standard and don't worry about it. But when they do have control (like the HRTF changes with positions of the various speakers) they try to do it VERY well.

I'll get back in touch with my contact there, but I think they're coming out with a new free promotional app that plays the entire Man of Steel soundtrack in Headphone-X. I'll let you know as soon as I do what's up.

Years ago, I worked as an engineer for E-MU systems, a subsidiary of Creative Labs. Creative's Advanced Technology Center was upstairs from E-MU in Scotts Valley. A few of my Creative ATC engineer friends were working on some advanced processing for 3D encoding/decoding using HRTFs and headphones. The positioning was significantly more accurate than what you get with typical 5.1 or 7.1. The tech demos were mind-blowing as I recall. Anyway, some of these guys eventually left when ATC shut down and went to DTS to carry on their research. I am not surprised to see DTS headphone technology taking a step forward.

Aha, that explains everything.  I heard some of those demos from Creative at CES many moons ago (maybe 10-15 years?) which is why this sounds old hat to me.  Your explanation puts all the pieces together for me as to this DTS stuff.  All makes sense now.  Same people basically.

Okay, just looking back at my LinkedIn contacts. Yes, the guys I know have career paths that look like this:
Aureal Semiconductor > Creative Labs > DTS, Inc.

So...same dudes/dudettes.