DTS, Dolby’s rival in the world of surround sound formats, has pushed the surround set up a notch with 11.1 surround sound.DTS brought its Neo:X technology that drives the 11 speaker and subwoofer set up to CeBIT in Germany.
The sound specialist’s goal with 11.1 is to add the dimension of height to the more common 7.1 surround set up while still maintaining the other dimensions that have been programmed into soundtracks. The assumption is that users jumping onto 3D are looking for further immersion in their home theatres.
The move to expand into ‘height’ of sound follows Dolby Laboratories’ ProLogic IIz technology which featured similarly oriented speakers.
The Neo:X technology is part of the processing that converts 5.1 and 7.1 soundtracks to an 11.1-suited layout. 11.1 is not currently programmed natively onto audio tracks in Blu-ray movies, instead favouring earlier 5.1 set ups for the most part.
The Neo:X 11.1 surround sound system was first displayed at CES 2011, though was displayed running with Intel storage technology to the European market at CeBIT recently.
