Whatever Happened To....

Whatever happened to DVD-A or DVD Audio? Created in 1999 and released in 2000, DVD-A or DVD Audio is a format that was to become the successor to the CD. Depending on what source you read, DVD-A was either developed by Toshiba, Panasonic, or the DVD Forum whose members include, Hitachi, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Pioneer, Philips, Sony, Time Warner, Toshiba, and JVC. The format makes use of a DVD's larger memory capacity to add greater bit depth and resolution and 5.1 surround capability.

A second format called SACD or Super Audio CD, was developed by Sony and Philips and was released in 1999 as an alternative to DVD-A. With the advent of 5.1 surround sound, the two formats were billed as the next big thing in high end audio. But, though many artists had dabbled with surround mixes of their work at the outset, major label foot dragging coupled with consumer disinterest has ultimately left stereo, the once and future king of the audio formats.

A year after the release of DVD Audio, Apple offered the world the iPod in 2001. At the time, the Mp3 was taking the industry by storm, and Apple took advantage of the trend by creating iTunes, which converted CDs into Mp3s. With the arrival of the iPod Mp3 player, Apple was primed to make a move that would change the way that most of us buy our music.

While it is true that the Mp3 is inferior to the sound of a CD and can't come close to what you hear with DVD Audio, the Mp3 offers music lovers two very important considerations. Those are, the immediacy of a digital download and a very low price per song. And over time, it has been determined that a bit rate of 320kbps produces a compressed audio file that yields what has been called, "near CD quality," sound.

Most SACD or DVD Audio discs sell from $17.99 to as much as $59.99. and most available titles are from Jazz and Classical artists. Mean while, most albums sold as digital downloads are $9.99 with single tracks being sold at $.99 or often even lower. I think that the pricing tends to make a consumers decision a little obvious. After all, what is a little distortion of your audio, if you can't really tell, or know what to listen for?

Why bring all this up? I'd being lying if I said that I don't buy Mp3s. Sometimes, it's the quickest and most affordable way to hear the music that you love or have been searching for, for a long time. But, I record my own music, and the software that I use produces 24bit 48khz sound, which is so good that when you play a CD after to listening to it, the CD sounds a little fuzzy and not as defined. I was looking forward to DVD Audio, just as I was hopeful that CD prices would fall instead of rise like they did. Fear not. The flac file is slowly being adopted by software manufacturers everywhere.

Flac is what's known as a lossless codec that is similar to a zip file. In this case, a CD or Wav file can be compressed into a flac file without any loss or degradation of sound. This is possible because nothing is being removed from the file as in Mp3 conversion. And, when the flac file is expanded the result is an exact duplicate of the original music file. But wait, there's more. A flac file when played, sounds identical to the original file from which it was made.

I'd say that there may be hope for greater sound quality yet. Now, if we can only increase the bandwidth, then we'd be talking.