5.1 Music Disc

Optical discs
Optical media types
Standards
See also

The DTS Music Disc (official name)[1], DTS Audio CD or 5.1 Music Disc is an audio Compact Disc that contains music in surround sound format. It is a predecessor of DVD Audio. Physically, it conforms to the Red Book standard, except for the way the music is encoded on the CD. Where regular CDs store the music as linear PCM, the DTS-CD stores music using the DTS format, with the same fixed bitrate as 16-bit linear PCM, namely 1,411,200 bit/s or roughly 1,378 Kib/s.

As opposed to other surround formats, such as Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio, which require a specialized player, a DTS-CD is compatible with most standard CD and DVD players with a digital (S/PDIF) output. These players will recognize the disk as a standard audio CD. The only requirement is an audio processor, usually a receiver that can decode the DTS audio stream.

Available surround content variations include 5.1, 5.1 ES, and 6.1 ES, each with or without the optional LFE channel.

References