DVD Audio: New favourite or failure?

The long-awaited DVD audio format is finally rolling out, allowing users to play DVD movies and CDs as well as DVD audio discs on a single player. Panasonic Consumer Electronics, a division of Matsushita Electric Corporation of America, announced two new DVD audio players for July release - one under the Panasonic brand name, the other under the Technics brand name.

Also in July, the company will release a line of DVD audio ready components, including the DVD audio-ready receivers and speakers. Later in the year will come a DVD audio/video player from Panasonic that goes into cars and SUVs. DVD audio uses the high capacity of DVDs to store far more music information.
Because of this, DVD audio can play back music either in two-channel form, the way CDs do now, but with much higher resolution, or in six-channel form using a surround sound system. Currently, CD audio has a 44.1kHz/16-bit bit rate, while two-channel DVD audio is 192kHz/24-bit playback. Six-channel is 96kHz/24-bit, meaning the six-speaker mix of music is higher quality and has greater depth than two-channel compact disc.

The higher frequency and bit rate mean much better audio range for the music, allowing for more depth and all kinds of subtle, softer details to be heard. The narrow bit rate of CDs means only so much data can get through, so a lot of subtleties are lost. Panasonic thinks this will bring back one of the few advantages that vinyl had.

“When (the) CD first came out a lot of people said it’s very nice, but it’s missing the warmth and atmosphere that records had because it didn’t have the full range of data from analog records,” said Gene Kelsey, vice president and general manager of Panasonic’s audio division in Secaucus, New Jersey. “DVD audio can put some of that back, but in a digital format,” he said. “It can bring back the fuller experience because of the amount of data you can put on the DVD.”

Whether existing CDs are issued as DVD audio discs is up to the recording artists and record labels, but Panasonic says all of the major labels are on board and plan to issue music in this format by this summer. In addition to the audio support, DVD audio-players will support interactive menus, just like the menus currently available on DVD movies.

The trick now is getting a mass market. Playing a DVD audio-player requires an amplifier with six audio inputs on the back, something only newer and mid- to high-end players have. “We think there is potential to be a mass-market product,” Kelsey said. “Will it take over CD? That’s still up in the air. Even among DVD audio owners there may be artists where the CD is enough for them.” Like DVD video players when they were first released in the winter of 1997, the DVD audio-players won’t be cheap.

The Panasonic DVD-A7 player will have a suggested retail price of $999.95, while the Technics DVD-A10 will have a suggested retail price of $1,199.95. For DVD video-playback, both units come with built-in Dolby Digital and DTS decoders, the two formats used in surround sound in movies.

DVD audio’s success with the mass market will hinge on whether the masses move to the more advanced audio gear that’s needed, according to Jeff McNeal, a 20-year radio broadcasting veteran and webmaster of The Big Picture DVD site. He predicts DVD video adopters will be the first to move to DVD audio, along with audiophiles.

“I don’t believe the majority of consumers will rush out to buy multichannel receivers just to use with DVD audio,” he said. “But the long-term prospects are pretty good.

The prospect of being able to be surrounded by your favorite music as opposed to hearing it through two speakers is very appealing.” The new DVD audio format also is good news for the artists and labels worried about intellectual property. DVD audio is both DeCSS- and MP3-proof. DVD-ROM drives on the market today cannot read DVD audio discs and multichannel songs won’t convert to MP because the MP3 format is not multichannel, Kelsey said. Also, the data files are much larger due to all the information they can store. So even if they were ripped as MP3s, the data files would be far bigger than the 4-to-7- megabyte size of current MP3s.