One thing this whole debate has not included is a definition of the term "better". "Better" is a subjective term that can mean different things to different people.
Clearly, DD is more
efficient but does technical efficiency
alone translate to DD being "better"? On the flip-side, dts can have higher bitrates than DD on DVD (DD on D-VHS I believe is 640 kbps vs DVDs 448kbps max) but does the higher bitrate translate to dts being "better"?
What does "better" mean in this debate? There is absolutely nothing wrong with preferring which audio format that sounds best to you, but that's just what it is:
preference. That doesn't mean any one is "better" or "worse" than the other. The problem with this whole debate is people try to prove one is technically "better" than the other to support their
preference, which is problematic itself. DD being a more efficient codec is about the only objective fact that can be proven to differentiate the two audio encoding mechanisms and without a proper definition of "better", within the context of this debate, every other techincal fact used to prove one is "better" than the other suddenly becomes subjective. DD combines channels at some frequency. Fine. That might sound like a technical deficiency but considering it was designed into DD, the reasoning behind
why it was done might be justification for why DD is "better", but again without knowing what "better" means we really can't come to any conclusions. On the flip side, the channel combining might be a technical side-effect of how DD functions that is undesirable, but does this means it's necessarily a "bad" thing?
I've read commentary but some who are well respected in online DVD community indicating DD is preferred over dts. I have yet to read people considered peers of these folks comment to the contrary. However, it's clear that the vast majority of DVD enthusiasts (regular DVD nuts like you and me and not "experts") prefer dts to DD, which is relevant to this discussion.
I think we need to be comfortable knowing we can enjoy watching movies in our prefered fashion (if possible) and let the rest of it go until we can get the term "better" defined and conduct an objective audio test to see if people can actually tell the difference between DD and dts audio. This sounds like a great event at Audio F/X that Seamonkey coordinated in the past.
Peace...