DTS-CD MEMORY TEST: What Were Your First 5-10 DTS-CD’s

[fizzywiggs41]

Ok , All you FINE DTS CD Collectors [*] ......


Do you remember. ......your First to ......oh shall we say -Tenth DTS CD ?
For my own nostalgic interest , I kept a list of all the DTS CD 's I have purchased since 1997 (or 1998 ) to the present-9 -2021.

Perhaps you were as "Obsessive Cumpulsive Quad Disordered" as myself . Or just curious about how they would sound in surround on your Home Theatre systems.

So if you can remember, .... post a list , or photos ....in order of first to last (10th).

Also for interest sake ...feel free to toss in or share your stories of purchase experience.

And of course I'll start.


*[ that includes wannabees as well]

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Purchased via mail at Ken Crane's .

Steely Dan - Gaucho , and a week or two after, I bought Steve Miller - Fly Like An Eagle .

The strange thing was I didn't own a DVD player to play them . All I knew is that I would soon enough have to get me a dvd player to listen in Discreet Sound to these two DTS CD's .
Also I knew there were more to come, thanks to the Promotion adverts in a couple of Audio magazines.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Every month or 2 additional titles were being added to the supply of available DTS CD's

My next few purchased were as pictured .

 

[fizzywiggs41]

I think it was around the end of 1998 , I finally got to hear these DTS CD's , when I purchased my first Toshiba DVD player .

So....the purchasing continued , and I was very happy to hear these in discrete surround (sans noise).

 

[fredblue]

Purchased via mail at Ken Crane's .

Steely Dan - Gaucho , and a week or two after, I bought Steve Miller - Fly Like An Eagle .

The strange thing was I didn't own a DVD player to play them . All I knew is that I would soon enough have to get me a dvd player to listen in Discreet Sound to these two DTS CD's .
Also I knew there were more to come, thanks to the Promotion adverts in a couple of Audio magazines.


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you could've played it in your CDP if it had Optical Out..

EDIT: oops - and an outboard DTS decoder, of course!

tbh i can't remember when or even how i first got DTS going.. i think it was a long gone Pioneer DVD player that did the decoding, it would be late '90's. i'll see if i can find which model it was.

i'd had AC-3 DD since about '96 or '97 with the LDP daisychaining into an APD-1 demodulator via RF back out to a DDP-2 DD decoder via optical and then into a DSP-A592 amp via 6-ch analogue.. phew that was a load of spaghetti cabling just to get lossy Dolby Digital when you think about it but (but but!) it was proper 5.1 and i never looked back!* yippee!

*until just now, when i started looking back! i better stop, its a pain in the old neck!

 

[winopener]

Abraxas
461 Ocean Boulevard
Fire
On Air

 

[Beefalo]

Toy Matinee ‎– Toy Matinee

Pete Namlook & Various – The Ambient Gardener · Summer

The Allman Brothers Band ‎– Fillmore East

Eagles ‎– Hell Freezes Over

The Moody Blues ‎– Days Of Future Passed

Don Henley ‎– The End Of The Innocence

 

[quicksrt]

I picked up The Ohio Players - Fire, and Wings - Band on the Run from the used CD bins for $8.99 each. It took me at least a year to be able to play them decoded properly.

 

[cbmmm3]

my very first was Sting Nothing Like The Sun. Bought at a store, not the internet. It was a Best Buy store. It was 2000 or 2001 I think

 

[Soundfield]

DTS was a format that entirely passed me by without me even noticing. I don't think I'd even heard of it until I saw references to it on this forum!

 

[fredblue]

DTS was a format that entirely passed me by without me even noticing. I don't think I'd even heard of it until I saw references to it on this forum!

i remember when my LD importer friend Phil got some of the first DTS LaserDisc titles in for sale, just 1 or 2 Universal movies like Jurassic Park, possibly Waterworld, he had some animated thing Prince of somewhere or other.. i so wanted that outboard decoder (the Millennium something was it called?) but it was even more expense and gear and i'd ploughed a wee wodge into AC-3 already (i was 22 with a life of wine, women and song, surround was a lower priority then.. now its Winelight, drag queens and showtunes in wall to wall surround! ) ah.. its all streaming now, i miss the days of piles of big old heavy LaserDiscs and miles of cabling... hmm maybe not actually!!

 

[TVB]

My recollection of getting into these surround discs was that of picking up dvd audio, sacds and dts cds all at about the same time. I remember going into a "media play" store and getting several discs which included moody blues seventh sojourn in dts (which I wasn't really impressed with). At about the same time I went to the local best buy store looking for surround discs and there was a very small selection. I bought 3 or four, but only remember getting the Don Henley dts in the large dvd audio case. I don't remember finding any dts discs in the smaller cases. I remember this disc because it was 26.99 and about $3 or $4 more than the others I bought. I checked back all the time for more titles, but the section got smaller and smaller until it was just gone. The majority of my dts discs came from ebay. I did find the Stephen Stills dts disc from a seller on amazon because it was practically impossible to find anywhere else. Looking for these surround discs was a lot of fun and brings back an exciting time of finding music software to play on my surround system.

 

[jimfisheye]

It might have been a copy of Abraxis? It would have been a shared rip. I honestly thought these were all bootlegs! Really truly. The couple I heard were degraded sounding copies of mutilated encoded quad to begin with and then run through the dts encode/decode. It looked like a really desperate way to try to share the remains of old quad decodes with people who only had access to a DVD player. (And appeared to work so poorly it wasn't worth it IMHO.)

It wasn't until I discovered this website and got prodded to investigate further that I heard a few old systems decodes that actually worked almost as designed! If a few of them managed to get through a few of these dts CDs, then I missed it completely!

In hindsight I think it's amazing some of the encode/decode systems were coaxed into delivering as well as they did. Seems to have required above average attention to detail from the consumer in the best cases. The sound that comes out when these systems go wrong is really altered.

 

[mandrix]

you could've played it in your CDP if it had Optical Out..

EDIT: oops - and an outboard DTS decoder, of course!

tbh i can't remember when or even how i first got DTS going.. i think it was a long gone Pioneer DVD player that did the decoding, it would be late '90's. i'll see if i can find which model it was.

i'd had AC-3 DD since about '96 or '97 with the LDP daisychaining into an APD-1 demodulator via RF back out to a DDP-2 DD decoder via optical and then into a DSP-A592 amp via 6-ch analogue.. phew that was a load of spaghetti cabling just to get lossy Dolby Digital when you think about it but (but but!) it was proper 5.1 and i never looked back!* yippee!

*until just now, when i started looking back! i better stop, its a pain in the old neck!

Fred, yer just so high tech! I bet you went to school with futuristic headphones and annoyed the teachers!

 

[mandrix]

All I can remember for sure is the first iteration of Fly Like An Eagle. I also bought the second version, which as far as I could tell the only difference was the beginning notes weren't cut off. Never was sure if that was a player thing or just how it made it to the pressing. Early playback by me was on a little component system I bought at a furniture/appliance store called Farmers Furniture.

Right now my stash of DTS-CD's, including the (31?) Pete Namlook released, and ever how many Brad Miller turned out, stands roughly maybe 130.

 

[par4ken]

My first purchases would of been BTO "Not Fragile", Santana "Abraxas", "Beck Bogert Appice" Moody Blues "Days of Future Passed", Steve Miller "Fly Like An Eagle", Billie Myers "Growing Pains" and Alan Parsons "On Air". I ended up purchasing many more titles until new DTS releases started drying up.

I purchased the Millennium 2.4.6 decoder to enable playback, my DVD player didn't have DTS built in.

 

[jefe1]

Well my most unusual and early DTS purchase was finding a copy of the Don Henley The End of Innocence in the large case while on vacation in Italy. It was used about the equivalent of 5 or 6 bucks in a music store forgot which city. Yes I used to look for records on my travels.....

 

[quicksrt]

My first purchases would of been BTO "Not Fragile", Santana "Abraxas", "Beck Bogert Appice" Moody Blues "Days of Future Passed", Steve Miller "Fly Like An Eagle", Billie Myers "Growing Pains" and Alan Parsons "On Air". I ended up purchasing many more titles until new DTS releases started drying up.

I purchased the Millennium 2.4.6 decoder to enable playback, my DVD player didn't have DTS built in.

I also bought that decoder, and just realized the other day that I have the box, with manual, and demo disc still in it. I wonder what I could get for it on ebay if anything?

Anyway, I was using two stereo amps with that DTS box to get quad out of those discs early on.

 

[mandrix]

I was just thinking, I still have a Creative DTS-610 unit. I ran a 50 foot heavy duty Toslink cable under the house from the bedroom to the HT in the living room so I could quickly preview upmixes on the main rig. As a real time encoder it does a pretty good job of taking 5.1 wav and turning into DTS. I used to run separate cables and had it balanced with huge caps like with a car setup, but even then I got some hum and stuff at times so went to the DTS-610. Haven't used it in years, as my upmixing waned, but that Toslink cable is still there waiting quietly. lol. Probably never to be used again.

 

[par4ken]

I also bought that decoder, and just realized the other day that I have the box, with manual, and demo disc still in it. I wonder what I could get for it on ebay if anything?

Anyway, I was using two stereo amps with that DTS box to get quad out of those discs early on.

I've seen them for around $40. I always thought that it sounded a bit better than the output of my old universal players, but that might just be the placebo effect. I'm sure my Oppo's (95 & 103) do a better job. I still have mine hooked up, connected to a Marantz Pro DVD Player. It doesn't work with most CD players as they output PCM instead of bitstream.