What is the main purpose of DVD-Audio format?

SACD and DVD-A were contemporaries. SACD was not "established" when DVD-A was released. Both formats were developed at the same time and their roll-outs were both at more or less the same time. SACD was first with stereo only players, but multichannel players were contemporaries. I still have the first DVD-Audio deck ever released, the hilariously overbuild Technics DVD-A10 in my basement collecting dust. Nice player. I also have a Sony DVP-NS500V SACD player, a very early Sony model. Both sound great and were great introductions to these great formats.

 

Funny thing is, BB had a decent selection of both formats for a number of years.

 

DVD-A was/is a terrific format. DVD-A is IMO more fun than SACD with its video content, photos and lyrics although SACD is easier to deal with since you don't need a monitor to select between 2ch/mch etc. tracks. Sound quality is excellent for digital and rivals SACD -- both are very fine when done right. To the extent DVD-As are still available (the King Crimson titles for example) I still buy them. The Oppo 105 does a great job playing them. I'm listening to the DVD-A hi-rez multi-channel track of Music From Big Pink as I write this -- outstanding.

 

"Blown away?", no, but that says more about those "listeners" than it does about the formats. I have to wonder if there even exists in most Best Buys a setup which enables people to hear a player that will play DVD-A on a good system that is geared to audio, not video. I'm certain there isn't one in my local. Since you brought up the markets, do you really think that all of these corporations would spend all kinds of time and money to develop formats that did not produce a demonstrable difference? I'll grant you that neither one of the formats "won" but that doesn't mean they were technically deficient.

This argument you make is the same sort of argument that seeks to define what makes good art or bad art. Good art MUST be the best selling stuff because the market has dictated it. I find that rather absurd as both an artist and as a businessman. An extension of your logic is that MP3 must be a better format because more people are buying iPods than CD (redbook) players. If you want to take a sampling of people who walk into Best Buy, I'll take a sampling of people who walk into real audio stores. The fact that there are more people walking into Best Buy is an indication of the consuming habits of the larger public (look at the "gear" they buy and the music that the chain stocks!) and that is all. When I play music for people on my system for those folks who have only been experiencing music on their iPod/MP3 players (assuming I can get them to sit still and shut up for a few minutes) the general reaction is WOW. That tells me plenty.

So we're down to what constitutes the "differences" I suppose. I'm not trying to be "not nice" (apologies if it came across as pretty aggressive in my first response to you) but we have to be talking about a difference in meanings. So when you talk about "subtle", in terms of "most believers", all I can say is that you are not talking to the same people I'm talking to and you're certainly not talking to the people who make up the clientele of my local bricks and mortar audio dealer. There's all kinds of people here on this forum who hear differences they think are substantial enough to warrant spending a lot of money on gear and hi-rez discs and files, and now, time, ripping whole collections to achieve the highest possible sonic results. I'll go back to my comment questioning the level, potentially, of your gear (since your ears are okay ). There's no way that "subtle" (to use your word again) distinctions are going to become something more than subtle, if noticeable at all, on lower end gear. That's just a fact. And the better the gear the more pronounced the distinctions become. And to the audiophile (not your average Best Buy consumer) those differences are something more than "subtle". Think of the distinctions drawn by people who refer to "blacker" backgrounds--even those subtleties become far more pronounced to the sophisticated listener with higher end gear. I have no idea how good your gear is, but if it's equal to the task of reproducing the benefits of SACD and DVD-A then I can only assume you either are not listening very well or don't value the difference enough to call those differences something other than "subtle", because to my ears, and to other audiophiles, they are not subtle.

 

I have 3 DVD-A's / Neil Young's Harvest, The Doobie Brother's The Captain and Me and Billy Cobham's Spectrum. They sounded good when I played them in my old Pioneer dvd player about 6 years ago. Are these considered good sounding DVD-A's?

 

Love DVD-A, especially multichannel 5.1 stuff. And the discs often had these cool extras you are referring to. I still buy them, like ELP, Porcupine Tree, King Crimson etc. Thumbs up for Music From Big Pink by the way...........

 

To me this is the main purpose of DVD-A. High resolution surround sound. The Blu-Ray format should be replacing DVD-A now though.

 

I have heard nothing in any "big box" store that is capable of "blowing me away" with a 5.1 DVD-Audio disc. With a stereo disc most people likely couldn't tell the difference.

 

Which reinforces points that both Dan C. and I make.

 

This post has so much mis-information in it that it just totally reeks of being dead wrong. You seem to know ansolutely nothing about DVD players and DVD Audio players, and DVD Audio as format.

 

For me, they are for letting me hear King Crimson in 5.1 uncompressed sound.

 

Ditto. The Crimsons sound excellent!

 

That's the key thing that is missing from SACD. I can buy albums from HDTracks or make my own high-rez DVD-A discs. I remember being in Tower in 2002 or so and trying to figure out what format to support. I bought into SACD because of the Columbia catalog.

 

SACD is not annoying for non videophiles and those who don't have a TV monitor in their listening room. DVD-A was not well planned or thought out. Those videos, the lack of consistent authoring standards, and the lack of any standards for DVD-A menus and for any front panel choice of programs did not win DVD-A any friends. SACD is usable by audiophiles who listen to Stereo only, who don't have any video in the same room. A much better planned and thought out system.

 

The problem for SACD was as soon as Sony crushed DVD-A with SACD .. Sony abandoned SACD.
I still dispise Sony for that move. For years Sony has had no sense of what any audiophile actually want. Sony tosses out a few crumbs here and there. but has no focus, and no game plan whatsoever for audio.
Sony is now run by fractured bean counters, who seem to never talk to each other, and only run focus groups to support the flavor of the day, only to abandon it the next.
Like right now they have $47,000 speakers.. But WHAT Sony amp or any Sony product would you be buying to go with? NONE.

 

I have the Talking Heads dual disk brick. I have never played the DVD-A side. Dumb question: I can play it in any DVD player and get hi res? I always thought they needed DVD audio players.

 

Rip it, then strip the audio track from the video. Like all sources it's hit and miss on DVD-A. Being a 2 channel audiophile, there are some excellent recordings in 2 channel to be had on DVD-A. For the ease of ripping, I prefer the DVD-A over SACD. Thus I do not bother with SACD. I prefer freedom to manipulate my purchased content as I please for my own personal listening.

Elvis

 

With the right ripping software there is no need to strip the video. You can simply rip the audio tracks. (I did it on my 5 Talking Heads DVD-As.)

 

I have that brick. The Redbook tracks are clearly derived from the higher resolution versions. I love the Talking Heads, but this set has seriously compressed dynamic range. Being mindful of the forum rules, I won't call out ripping software specifically, but it's pretty easy to find and worked perfectly. But like I said, what resulted was hirez but brickwalled

 

Is ripping the HiRez tracks from a DVD-A actually illegal, if it's for your own personal use, on a server or HiRez DAP?

 

It can be done with commercially available software.

 

I bought a DVD-A player in 2001. I have never needed a TV to switch between 5.1 and stereo.

 

I have an Ayre C-5xeMP SACD/DVD Audio player, I bought it with the thinking that I might as well have DVD-A capability if I'm buying a new disc player. I enjoy it, I probably have about 25 DVD-A discs including the R.E.M. albums which sound excellent, the Queen discs and various others. Although I don't need a video monitor to access the 2 channel tracks, it is a pain to get there using the remote control. Sound quality is great though, but I don't listen to the DVD-A discs nearly as much as SACDs that I have.

 

My experience exactly. In fact, with the Ayre you don't even have the option of a video monitor as it offers no video output. I had a cheap Technics DVD-A player. I hooked it up to my TV and noted the appropriate Group on a Post-It which I stuck inside the case.

 

Do you want to sell it?