Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Difference Between DTS-6 and DTS-6D?

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Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 03-04-2013, 11:57 AM:

What is the difference between a DTS-6 and a DTS-6D?

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 03-04-2013, 12:13 PM:

The DTS-6 is older and has two CD drives, originally "caddy" drives where you put the CD in a removable and easily lost/broken "caddy" thing to put it in the unit. By now these will almost certainly have been replaced with drawer drives after the original ones failed. You can add a third drive (necessary for 2-disc features plus a trailer disc) but it is rather kludgy since the third drive will not be inside the DTS-6 case.
The DTS-6D is newer and has three drive bays, I think they all came with drawer drives but early ones may have had caddies.

There have been a few updates to these units, if you get a really old one it may need a circuit board and/or ROM chip replacement to work with newer drives when the old ones fail.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 03-04-2013, 12:26 PM:

One that comes to my mind is the better crossover on surround channels. Subwoofer channel is mixed into surrounds during encoding. It's then extracted during decoding, leaving your surrounds band-limited 80-20k. The 6D uses a better crossover.

That said, for the average use they're identical.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 03-04-2013, 01:29 PM:

I've also read that the DA converter in the DTS-6 was better than the 6D.

AJG

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 03-04-2013, 03:08 PM:

6D player units had more memory and had faster 16 spin trays along with the usage of the third tray for the new trailer disc that DTS was issuing out-along with some features that went over 3hrs long that came with three discs. And it used the 486x25 processor were the 6 had the 386sx25 processor.

Both units were upgradeable to the v.1.46 - the last version available.

Still, very hardy units.

Then, things went to pot when DTS issued out the 6AD units - a complete redesign to include a self contained processor and a cheap version of Dolby SR...along with discontinuing the i386 based processing to a Motorola chip based processing.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 03-04-2013, 04:03 PM:

The interface by which the processors connect to an existing cinema processor changed as well. The 6D interface boards for (say) the CP65 are current items, whereas the DTS6 requires an oddball cable.

You could make whatever cable is necessary, of course, but 6D may be a better pick if you value your time.

Posted by Marco Giustini (Member # 4544) on 03-05-2013, 11:06 AM:

And the 6D is still supported if not mistaken? Not that there is much to be supported these days though!

Posted by Tony Bandiera Jr (Member # 2365) on 03-05-2013, 12:47 PM:

quote:
And the 6D is still supported if not mistaken? Not that there is much to be supported these days though!

Yes and no. DataSat no longer supports the 6, 6D, 6AD or (I think) XD10/20 directly. They still have some of the interface cards but actual support of the units themselves is done by an outside vendor.

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 03-05-2013, 03:25 PM:

The XD10 is no longer supported (directly) by Datasat.

The DTS-6 had really nice Jensen transformers in it. As I recall, the DTS-6 had a signal level issue where it would run out of headroom on some signals. Other than that...it was a fine piece.

At this stage, the 6D isn't really much more supported than the 6. As others have noted, the processor interface boards are different between the two since the 6 was built to work as a DTS-S (stereo) or a DTS-6 (6-track). So they had to ensure that if you only had the Stereo version with the board with just 2 decoders, that a suitable connector and signal path existed. With the 6D, all of that was gone and it was only a 6-track system so they could consolidate the signal path and put more of it inside the unit.

Posted by Louis Bornwasser (Member # 3063) on 03-05-2013, 08:19 PM:

Quality Presentations, Massapeuqa NY still supports both. I have only seen the 6 track units; don't think there are hardly any 2 track units. louis