What is the main purpose of DVD-Audio format?

Lot more SACDs available than DVD-Audio. 8,600 titles in SACD versus maybe 1,000-1,500 in DVD-Audio?

More SACD titles coming out every month too. Some really good ones by our host on AF and also APO.

So who really got killed here?

 

Well put! +1, John M.

 

Wasn't most pro audio gear back in the day before higher sampling rates 16/48 or 24/48? In my limited exposure, most projects I saw were at 48KHz. Seems to me consumer 48KHz playback could have been a good thing with less sample rate conversion going on.

 

Wasnt 48khz a video resolution and 44khz for audio. Its not in stone but that seems to me the way it was intentionally done IMO. Then the 88, 176, and so forth for audio. John M.

 

To annoy audiophiles, who hate video monitors in the same room. SACD was the better High Res format. DualDisc should never have been born. Not redbook compliant or reliable. Every DVD-A should have been mandated to have a working front panel button, Stereo High Resolution, Surround High Resolution, and D0lby Digital should have been easily chosen by button press.

 

Almost entirely wrong. See post #11 and others, or the Wikipedia (for DVD-A)

 

I like Bill but I was a little taken aback by the notion that 16/44 can be as good as hirez.

 

And he seemed confused as to the relative capabilities of DVD-A vs. DVD-V.

 

Well, the DVD players that I have had at my shop have all been able to play 24/96 audio from DVD. Going back to '97 or so even. I suppose there are cheap players that don't have the capability to play DVD-A then? I had the top end Samsung units, then NAD and Cambridge Audio when those became available. I had (and probably still do somewhere) a Chesky produced audio DVD that was billed as an introduction to high resolution audio at 24/96. It would play in those players as an audio disc. I am not sure if there was any video on it, i don't think so other than perhaps some logos, track titles or similar. That would not play in a CD player at all. It was uncompressed 24/96 and it was DVD audio, whether it was the trademark DVD-A format or not, or even if there is anything to really distinguish it, I don't know. I can say that it was the best effort of a respectable audio production company at higher than CD resolution audio, so for that reason, I can't imagine it being any worse at all than DVD-A and assume that it was the equal or even superior to many DVD-A releases.

The point being that it didn't sound as good to me as a really good CD player playing a similarly well produced CD. Now, maybe there are a few top performing DVD players or "universal players" as they are known as, that would produce equal or better sound than those nice, but older CD players. The funny thing was that one of the DVD players by NAD was actually a very good sounding CD player, which is not the norm. It was their top end model and even in that, I preferred the sound of many CD's to that DVD-A disc. Sure, that's a limited sample but it was enough for me to dismiss replacing an entire CD collection for a format with very limited offerings. Even SACD, which had a warmer sound was too expensive and selections too few to consider IMO. Many people disagree and bought these new formats but I think that the history of CD, DVD, DVD-A, and SACD in terms of numbers of units sold speaks for itself. Consider also that I have collected Lp as my primary audio format for many years, I already had two collections of music, one analog and one digital. The promise of digital video with good quality audio included as with DVD has proven to be much more valuable to more people than new audio only formats. For audio only, the original formats are very capable when well produced and nice gear is used to play them back.
-Bill

 

It was not. Some call those DAD. They were really very good discs, but they were 2 channel. To hold 6 channels of high resolution PCM compression was required.

That disc cannot be called DVD-Audio unless it has been compressed with Meridian Lossless Packing.

 

"Can be" are the operative words there. 16/44 can be, but does not have to be in all cases. The same is true for high rez, where it can be better, but not in all cases. The samples that I compared didn't require any real tough decisions to hear differences; the differences just were not compelling enough for me. There were strengths but equally as noticeable weaknesses. This was 24/96, as is DVD-A, so hence my assumption that DVD-A is typically of that level in terms of capability. Going forward, high rez might be 24/192 or even 32/384. That would have some better comparative results IMO but it again requires completely revamping one's system and collection to take advantage of it. Perhaps the largest problem that has slowed the progress of better "quality" hi-rez has been the industry's fixation on multi-channel rather than quality. It's always been about more; more gear, more formats, more sales. Add to that the dominance of branding/licensing formats such as DVD-A, SACD, DTS, DD, etc and you again have difficulty trying to standardize and improve upon a format. Collaborations such as CD and DVD video are rare in industry and for something as large as the entertainment industry, it really is necessary. So forgive me for enjoying my Lp and CD for audio only formats and DVD for a video format, but the fact that these formats have shown some support in standards by many different companies over a number of years, they are still the wisest investments IMO.
-Bill

 

This was a stereo disc. I thought I read where someone was just saying a few posts back that they thought DVD-A was 24/96 uncompressed stereo and compressed multi-channel sound on one disc. The disc that I had was only a 24/96 uncompressed stereo track, but from that I fail to see a difference in an uncompressed stereo track on another disc just because it is "branded" as DVD-A. Is there some other difference that DVD-A has (other than DRM) that make it a superior form of "24/96 uncompressed stereo"?
-Bill

 

It's not superior.

 

I have one DVD-A of the NightFly which is 24/48 and does sonnd good, but it should have been 2496 except that may be the masters were only 2448. I'm glad I have it, but I'm not buying anymore.

 

OK. I believe there some very good DVD-Audio releases. It's not a format I can play, but I have heard a few demos. If you don't mind the remix, American Beauty is pretty inpressive.

 

I'm really sorry to change the subject a little, but i once tried to record audio from a DVD using the optical output and connected it to my MiniDisc recorder. The MiniDisc recorded displayed that it can not record the signal, like it was protected. I've never had this problem with standard CDs. How can one bypass this to make a digital DVD recording unto MiniDisc?

 

I may be a dead format, but all of the best sounding albums I own are on DVD-A. To my ear, DVD-A beats SACD of the same album, but I do tend to like things a tad brighter than most so maybe thats just me. Becks "Sea Change" on DVD-A is an absolute stunner, as is Hotel California and Porcupine Trees "Deadwing" album.. Heck, the only DVD-A I own thats bested by its SACD counterpart is the Foreigner S/T album. Again, all of this is IMO. Hopefully there will come a day when all of the OOP DVD-A discs will stop being so desired that they no longer command such high prices.

 

Literally speaking a DVD-V player can play DVD-A discs. It simply cannot play the DVD-A portion of them. Most (all?) DVD-A discs have non hi-res tracks as well. I was giving him the benefit of the doubt in interpreting that sentence.

 

American Beauty & Workingman's Dead were the main reasons I purchased a DVD-A compatible player.

Too bad the DVD-A format never came into its own, although hardly a surprise on a bunch of different levels.

 

Bill, go to the Wikipedia and read about DVD-A. For one thing, as has been mentioned, DVD-A has 24/192 capability and there are a number of commercially released DVD-A's with this. Classic Records released a series of DVD's with 24/96 DVD-V audio only (such as you describe) on one side and 24/192 DVD-A on the other side for those with compatible players.

Like anything else, though, the mastering almost always is more important than the medium, and a well-mastered CD will usually sound better than a less well-mastered SACD, DVD, Bluray or LP.

 

Well a well recorded record is even more important than that,but that's far from the point of DVD Audio ,for anyone whos got the dvd audio King Crimson tiles ,one get great mastering,sound plenty of different mixes and extras tracks
plus some video ,something you simply can't get on a single cd

 

To sell. But failed.

 

Sailing to Philadelphia is excellent too as is that David Crosby with the long name.

 

Pyrrhic victory: it killed both formats. It was sad, because I thought both SACD and DVD-A had great potential. I was stunned that Sony/Philips and Panasonic/etc. would battle like this on something so silly... and they lost, dealers lost, and consumers lost. Nobody won.

 

Too bad that MP3 were already raging on when DVD-A (and later SACD) appeared.