[Nighthawk]

From two reviewers:

Joe Whip:

Guess what folks, I was WRONG. The lossless Dolby True HD track here smashes the Dolby Digital Plus track in every way imaginable. If the HD-DVD track rates a 5, the Dolby True HD track rates a 7. To start off, lets look at the bass response. The bass here is much richer and fuller than that on the HD DVD release. The Blu-Ray release rocks the house. I also found the dynamics on the BD release to best the HD DVD release by a wide margin as well. This is a reference audio mix if I ever heard one. I also found the imaging and channel separation to be better giving the audio a much deeper image, allowing you to hear into the sound field much further than the HD DVD release which sounds a tad flatter in comparison. FInally, the audio on the BD disc is much smoother and open without even the trace of hardness, even much more so than the HD DVD. You can really crank this baby up without any issue of listener fatigue. Hearing loss? Well, that is another story.

http://www.tvpredictions.com/2008/08...nsformers.html

Ralph Potts:

I ran a few comparisons between the Blu-ray Disc and the HD DVD. Upon comparing the quality of the video I saw no discernible difference between the two. I compared the lossy Dolby Digital Plus and Lossless Dolby TrueHD sound tracks. After level matching I ran all of the aforementioned sequences. I powered up both players and cued up the beginning of each sequence. I watched them one at a time switching back and forth. There have been reports (two from writers whose opinions I respect) of a 6 to 10 decibel increase in volume on the TrueHD mix. I did not experience that in my evaluation/comparison. What I did notice was an improvement in low frequency reproduction. It seems as though the minor attenuation (for lack of a better word) of the bass present on the HD DVD is no longer present. The bass has better tactility and improved depth which can be felt not just in the room but within the body as well. The improvement here seems to be related to the deeper bass frequencies and is most appreciable in the scenes in the film that contain lower bass content. That is not strictly the case though. An example would be in chapter 18 where the cryogenic freezing apparatus where Megatron is being held has begun to fail. There is an alarm that begins to sound and the scene switches the control room. There is a low bass tone that accompanies that transition before the scene switches again. It was detectable on the HD DVD but on the Blu-ray Disc it could be felt as wave of punchy low bass energy. The beginning of chapter 2 (mentioned earlier) definitely had a more distinct and powerful low bass presence than on the HD DVD. I ran these scenes along with the others mentioned earlier in this review 3 times each and double checked to ensure that output levels were the same. I also ran these same scenes using the PS3 rather than bit streaming the audio from my Panasonic and Samsung players and the results were the same. I am satisfied that the Blu-ray version of Transformers does in fact offer an improvement in this area over the HD DVD. I want to be clear that the low frequency effects on the HD DVD are quite good and the difference here is not night and day but is certainly noticeable. As far as any appreciable differences in the overall sound quality I would say that if present they are minimal.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1057518

So, as for those of us who have patiently waited for the Blu-ray, it looks like the wait was worth it. And it also shows that although both got 5-star audio scores from Peter, the TrueHD is noticeably superior.