DVD Audio
High definition pictures look good; high resolution audio sounds even better
DVD-Audio is the next generation of audio format originally designed to be the successor of the CD. DVD-Audio discs when played through a compatible player on a high end system will present high resolution audio, recoded in the same pulse code modulation format as the standard CD. Instead of two channel stereo, DVD-Audio is a 5.1 channel audio format with frequency and bit rate dramatically increased. The net result is high resolution sound through 5.1 channels; a DVD-Audio disc will truly make your surround sound system sing like nothing else has.
Standard DVDs are encoded in Dolby Digital using 5.1 channels without the high resolution sampling rates. Dolby Digital audio is further degraded from the original recording with MPEG2 compression that fits the performance on the DVD you buy at the store. DTS is recorded at a higher bit rate than Dolby Digital with the same 5.1 channels, so it's often considered the superior format. But DTS is also compressed in MPEG2 just like Dolby Digital. DVD-Audio is the only way to hear what uncompressed, high bit rate PCM recordings can sound like through your system.
DVD-Audio was poised to be the replacement for CD, but things didn't quite work out as planned. DVD-Audio has been relegated to the class of niche curiosity. Two things stood in the way of the spread of DVD-Audio: SACD and Napster. SACD is a competing high resolution multi-channel audio format by Sony which was released soon after DVD-Audio. The two formats have engaged in a bloody, but largely silent, format war that has all but assured their mutual exclusion from consumer favor.
Napster represents the MP3 file sharing revolution that threatened to take the recording industry down the tubes kicking and screaming. MP3 is a lossy compression format designed to make sharing of song files over the internet faster. The MP3 is a poor quality substitute for the original music file on the CD from which it was ripped. But audio quality doesn't seem to matter as much as total control of the media. Therein lies a lesson to the entertainment industry they're loathe to accept; if MP3s teach us anything it's obvious that people love free stuff, but that's not all. It should teach us that the people want their media as transient data that allows them to do what they please- there isn't much the entertainment industry can do about that.
The numbers of DVD-Audio enthusiasts have grown in recent years thanks to the advent of affordable Universal DVD players like Pioneer's 563-A. The Universal DVD player is capable of playing just about all formats of silvery plastic discs available today. Although it generally refers specifically to the ability to playback both DVD-Audio and SACD, they can playback DVD-Video, CD, DVD-R/RW and the gamut of usual suspects from late 90s technologies. The Universal DVD-Player will soon take on a whole new meaning when HD DVD is released and suddenly Universal DVD players aren't so universal anymore.