What is your choice ?

I have just listened to the Dolby Surround track of Heaven & Earth ( Oliver Stone film ) and it sounds
excellent. Really nice dynamics, voices coming from the rear speakers. It actually kind of sounds odd
in plain stereo but once you switch on Dolby Surround encoding it sounds brilliant.

Of course Dolby Digital 5.1 has five discreet channels but the bitrate is rather low and it most certainly does
not sound nearly as dynamic and clear than a PCM 2.0 Dolby Surround audio track.

Actually I prefer Dolby Surround over Dolby Digital 5.1. That is why I don't even miss not having a AC3
demodulator.

I would say I’m in total agreement with you on this one @confederate, apart from the advantage of discrete rear surrounds & LF channels DD 5.1 generally sounds (with maybe just a handfull of exceptions) rather flat, lifeless & uninvolving compared to Dolby Surround encoded PCM audio to my ears too. I do think though that this becomes even more apparent on well set up and more revealing decent quality audio systems?

Having said that, for some reason it sounds somewhat more bearable on LD than it ever did on DVD for some reason even though its technically slightly inferior on the former format.

90% of the time, if the LD has both ill always choose Dolby Digital

I've read about the differences between them because I'm a dork, but I admit that the difference in clarity/dynamics etc. is too subtle for me. (My eyes are a lot more discerning than my ears.) Occasionally though with discreet surround I recognize how a specific sound's placement adds a little something to the movie, so I opt for AC-3 when available.

Really my opinion is that unless something's screwy about your setup, you can't go wrong with either.

It depends.

If the DD 5.1 mix is really immersive, I’d prefer listening to that. There is no doubt the clarity and sound reproduction of two channel PCM is amazing but it can’t give you discrete surrounds.

Still, I will sometimes go back and forth between the two because it’s worth listening to how different they can sound in surround mode. I actually do like the bass reproduction on Star Trek: First Contact more when using PCM w/ Dolby Pro-Logic II.

Off the top of my head i think AC-3RF is 384KBPS,
Which may not read like alot if you think about old MP3's etc,

And if you divided that by 5.1 its even worse reading.
But its not divided by 5.1,
If the front right and rear rights are active, all that bandwidth is steered into those speakers,
It will actively and more importantly discreetly move steer where bitrate is needed.

Think im right anyway

Rain in the rears, helicopter circling round with my speakers, gunshot from a rear left, tank driving threw a wall making the LFE go wild. Little things like this i will 90% of the time choose Dolby AC-3RF.

Watching a laserdisc in 2023 should be a experience and Dolby Digital just adds the cherry on top in my earholes, if its avaliable.

But im just some guy in New Zealand

That is essentially correct

The bits are treated as a pool of data that the codec pulls from so each channel gets what is needed to produce as best a reproduction of sound as it can. The rest is just following the psychoacoustic model for human hearing to further save on data and maximizing sound quality once again. It's not a perfect system but when DD was reviewed back in the day the reviewers were very impressed still. Now some 28 years later, the original DD format is still used on broadcast, DVD, cable, etc. and it still sounds great to me. LD does probably sound better vs those other delivery systems just simply due to the theatrical mixes that many DD encoded LDs' received before home mixes became a thing later on.

Even here in New Zealand select movies and few shows have AC-3 on broadcast TV.
Once again i prefer Dolby Digital over voodoo best guessed matrix surround while thats available even though we find ourselves watching broadcast television less and less.