Decoding LFE

[cujo75]

Drew, never thought about the line out converter for home use. Duh!!! I have done it many times in car audio applications. As for the DIY DAC, it is way beyond my skill level. Maybe someday I can find a good teacher locally, and try my hand at a few kits. thanks for all the help from everyone. Oh and one more thing. Does a line level converter, as mentioned by Drew Eckhardt degrade sound quality or frequency response in any way?

[Pano]

Originally posted by cujo75
Does a line level converter, as mentioned by Drew Eckhardt degrade sound quality or frequency response in any way?

If it's coming off a power amp output, it may not be the "best" sound quality, but I doubt it matters for the LFE. If it is a line level LFE out (as on many receivers) then no worries!

[Drew Eckhardt]

Originally posted by panomaniac
So are we saying that the LFE track contains only LF info?
Makes sense, but is there a standard? What's the BW of the LFE track? (He asks reachng for google)

Yes.

Dolby Digital uses a 240Hz sampling rate. Per Nyquist this provides 120Hz of bandwidth. The default Dolby Digital encoder settings apply an 8th order 120Hz low-pass to the input. THX DVDs are mastered with an 80Hz low-pass.

Theatrical DTS is a 5-channel system, with two channels used for surround above 80Hz and LFE below. Home DTS is a different beast allowing for 80 or 150Hz of bandwidth