DVD-Audio
The Flaming Lips' CD and DVD release of Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, one of the first major albums to employ the DVD-Audio format. The Flaming Lips (formed in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1983 is an American rock band Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is the tenth Album by The Flaming Lips, released on July 16, 2002.
Media type	Optical disc
Encoding	Meridian Lossless Packing or uncompressed LPCM
Capacity	up to 8. Mifu01jpg|200px|thumb|right|Chinese calligraphy written in a language content format by Song Dynasty (A Meridian Lossless Packing, also known as Packed PCM (PPCM is a proprietary Lossless compression technique for compressing PCM audio data developed by Meridian Linear pulse code modulation ( LPCM) is a method of encoding audio information digitally 5 GB
Read mechanism	640 nm wavelength semiconductor laser
Developed by	DVD Forum
Usage	Audio storage
Extended from	DVD

DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering very high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. An audio format is a medium for storing Sound and Music. The term is applied to both the physical Recording media and the Recording formats of High fidelity or hi-fi reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts ( Audiophiles to refer to high-quality reproduction DVD (also known as " Digital Versatile Disc " or " Digital Video Disc " - see Etymology)is DVD-Audio includes no video and should not be confused with video DVDs containing concerts and music videos. DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD (DVD-ROM discs and is currently the dominant form of consumer video formats in the United The first discs entered the marketplace in 2000. 2000 ( MM) was a Leap year that started on Saturday of the Common Era, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. Future occasional DVD-Audio releases are expected and/or have been announced. DVD-Audio is in a format war with Super Audio CD (SACD), another format for delivering high-fidelity audio content. A format war describes competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats typically for Data storage devices and Recording formats for Electronic Super Audio CD ( SACD) is a read-only optical audio disc format that can provide higher fidelity digital audio reproduction than the Red Neither has gained a strong position in the marketplace. As media players that can play both DVD-Audio and SACD (and many other formats) are available, both are likely to co-exist.

Audio specifications

DVD-Audio offers many possible configurations of audio channels, ranging from single-channel mono to 5. Monaural (often shortened to mono) sound reproduction is single-channel 1-channel surround sound, at various sampling frequencies and sample rates. 51, Multichannel audio, Multichannel music Surround 3D Surround 5 ^[1] (The ". 1" denotes a Low-frequency effects channel (LFE) for bass and/or special audio effects. Low-Frequency Effects ( LFE) is the name of an audio track specifically intended for deep low-pitched sounds ranging from 3-200 Hz. )

Compared to the compact disc, the much higher capacity DVD format enables the inclusion of either:

• Considerably more music (with respect to total running time and quantity of songs) or
• Far higher audio quality, reflected by higher linear sampling rates and higher bit-per-sample resolution, and/or
• Additional channels for spatial sound reproduction. A Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an Optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio Sampling theorem The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem states that perfect reconstruction 51, Multichannel audio, Multichannel music Surround 3D Surround 5

Audio on a DVD-Audio disc can be stored in many different bit-rate/sampling rate/channel combinations:

Different bit-rate/sampling rate/channel combinations can be used on a single disc. Optical disc authoring, including DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring (often referred to colloquially but improperly as burning) is the process of assembling In Computing, an optical disc drive ( ODD) is a Disk drive that uses Laser light or electromagnetic waves near the Light spectrum Optical disc authoring, including DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring (often referred to colloquially but improperly as burning) is the process of assembling Optical disc authoring software is Computer software for authoring optical discs including CD-ROMs and DVDs They are also known by synonyms Optical disc authoring requires a number of different technologies working in tandem from the media to the firmware to the control electronics of the drive. In Optical disc authoring, there are multiple modes for recording including Disc-At-Once, Track-At-Once, and Session-At-Once. Packet writing is an Optical disc recording technology used to allow write-once and rewritable CD and DVD media to be used in a similar manner to a The Laserdisc (LD is an obsolete Home video disc format and was the first commercial Optical disc storage medium Video Single Disc (abbreviated as VSD was a disc-based format that carried the same analog video information as a Laserdisc, but on a 12-centimetre (4 A Compact Disc (also known as a CD) is an Optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio Red Book is the standard for audio CDs ( Compact Disc Digital Audio system or CDDA) The DTS-CD, DTS Audio CD or 51 Music Disc (official name is an audio Compact Disc that contains music in Surround sound format Super Audio CD ( SACD) is a read-only optical audio disc format that can provide higher fidelity digital audio reproduction than the Red Photo CD is a system designed by Kodak for digitizing and storing photos in a CD A CD-R ( C ompact D isc- R ecordable is a variation of the Compact Disc invented by Philips and Sony. CD-ROM (an initialism of "Compact Disc Read-Only Memory " is a pre-pressed Compact Disc that contains data accessible to but not writable Compact Disc ReWritable (CD-RW is a rewritable Optical disc format This article is about 'CD Video' a hybrid analog/digital format Super Video CD ( Super Video Compact Disc or SVCD) is a Digital format for storing Video on standard Compact discs SVCD was intended A CD+G (also known as CD+Graphics) is a special audio Compact disc that contains Graphics Data in addition to the audio data CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for Audio CDs It allows for storage of additional information (e CD-ROM XA is an extension of the Yellow Book Mode 2 standard for CD-ROMs that combines compressed audio visual and computer data allowing all to be accessed CD-i or Compact Disc Interactive is the name of an interactive multimedia CD player developed and marketed by Royal Philips Electronics N A MiniDisc ( MD) is a Magneto-optical disc-based Data storage device initially intended for storage of up to 80 minutes of digitized audio In January 2004 Sony announced the Hi-MD media storage format as a further development of the MiniDisc-Format. DVD (also known as " Digital Versatile Disc " or " Digital Video Disc " - see Etymology)is DVD-R is a DVD recordable format A DVD-R typically has a storage capacity of 4 A DVD+R is a once-writable Optical disc with 47 GB (4377 GiB) of storage capacity (more precisely 2295104 sectors of 2048 Bytes DVD-R DL (DL stands for Dual Layer) also called DVD-R9, is a derivative of the DVD-R format standard DVD+R DL (DL stands for Double Layer) also called DVD+R9, is a derivative of the DVD+R format created by the DVD+RW Alliance. A DVD-RW disc is a rewritable Optical disc with equal storage capacity to a DVD-R, typically 4 DVD+RW is the name of a standard for Optical discs one of several types of DVD, which hold up to about 4 DVD-RW DL is a rewritable Optical disc standard with storage capacity of 8 A DVD+RW DL is a rewritable Optical disc with storage capacity of 8 DVD-RAM ( DVD – Random Access Memory) is a disc specification presented in 1996 by the DVD Forum, which specifies rewritable DVD-RAM media and the appropriate DVD-Ds, also referred to as disposable DVDs are a type of digital video disc that is designed to be used for a maximum 48 hours after the containing package is opened Ultra Density Optical ( UDO) is an Optical disc format designed for high-density storage of high-definition video and The Universal Media Disc ( UMD) is an Optical disc medium developed by Sony for use on the PlayStation Portable. not insert the publicly disclosed HD DVD key into this article for the time being not insert the publicly disclosed HD DVD key into this article for the time being not insert the publicly disclosed HD DVD key into this article for the time being not insert the publicly disclosed HD DVD key into this article for the time being not insert the publicly disclosed HD DVD key into this article for the time being Blu-ray Disc recordable (or BD-R) refers to two Optical disc formats that can be recorded with an Optical disc recorder. For the series of US government publications on Computer security standards see Rainbow Series. ISO 9660 a standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO defines a File system for CD-ROM media Joliet is the name of an extension to the ISO 9660 File system. The Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol (RRIP IEEE P1282 is an extension to the ISO 9660 volume format which adds POSIX File system semantics The El Torito Bootable CD Specification is an extension to the ISO 9660 CD-ROM specification The primary file system for Apple Macintosh computers is HFS (or HFS+ The Universal Disk Format ( UDF) is a format specification of a File system for storing files on optical media Mount Rainier ( MRW) is a format for writable Optical discs which provides the Packet writing and defect management Although research into Optical data storage has been ongoing for many decades the first popular system was the Compact Disc, introduced in 1982, adapted to data For instance, a DVD-Audio disc may contain a 96 kHz/24-bit 5. 1-channel audio track as well as a 192 kHz/24-bit stereo audio track. Also, the channels of a track can be split into two groups stored at different resolutions. For example, the front speakers could be 96/24, while the surrounds are 48/20.

Audio is stored on the disc in Linear PCM format, which is either uncompressed or losslessly compressed with Meridian Lossless Packing. Linear pulse code modulation ( LPCM) is a method of encoding audio information digitally For processes which reduce the amount of time it takes to listen to and understand a recording see Time-compressed speech. Meridian Lossless Packing, also known as Packed PCM (PPCM is a proprietary Lossless compression technique for compressing PCM audio data developed by Meridian The maximum permissible total bitrate is 9. 6 Megabits per second. Channel/resolution combinations that would exceed this need to be compressed. In uncompressed modes, it is possible to get up to 96/16 or 48/24 in 5. 1, and 192/24 in stereo. To store 5. 1 tracks in 88. 2/20, 88. 2/24, 96/20 or 96/24 MLP encoding is mandatory.

The LFE channel is actually full range, and can be recorded at the same resolution as the other channels. This permits it to be used instead as an extra main channel, for example as a "height" speaker above the listening position; this has been done on some releases. Such usage is non-standard, and will often require special set-up by the end user.

If no native stereo audio exists on the disc, the DVD-Audio player may be able to downmix the 5. Downmixing is a general term used for manipulating Audio where a number of distinct audio channels are mixed together to produce a lower number of channels 1-channel audio to two-channel stereo audio if the listener does not have a surround sound setup (provided that the coefficients were set in the stream at authoring). Downmixing can only be done to two-channel stereo, not to other configurations, such as 4. 0 quad. DVD-Audio may also feature menus, text subtitles, still images and video, plus in high end authoring systems it is also possible to link directly into a Video_TS folder that might contain Video tracks, as well as PCM stereo and other "bonus" features. .

Player compatibility

The introduction of the DVD-Audio format required some kind of backward compatibility with existing DVD-Video players. In Technology, especially Computing (irrespective of platform a product is said to be backward compatible when it is able to take the place of an older product DVD-Video is a consumer video format used to store digital video on DVD (DVD-ROM discs and is currently the dominant form of consumer video formats in the United To address this, most DVD-Audio discs contain, at a minimum, a Dolby Digital 5. Dolby Digital is the marketing name for a series of lossy audio compression technologies developed by Dolby 1-channel audio track on the disc^[2] (which can be downmixed to two channels for listeners with no surround sound setup). Some discs also include a native Dolby Digital 2. 0 stereo, and even a DTS 96/24 5. DTS (also known as Digital Theater Systems) owned by DTS Inc ( is a multi-channel digital Surround sound format used for both commercial/theatrical 1-channel, audio track. ^[3]

Because the DVD-Audio format is a member of the DVD family, a single disc can have multiple layers and even two sides that contain media. A common configuration includes a "DVD-Video" zone on a DVD-Audio formatted single sided disc. The high-resolution, multichannel audio losslessly encoded using MLP is only playable on DVD-Audio hardware but the DVD-Video zone, which can contain Dolby or DTS 5. 1 mixes and even video makes the disc compatible with all DVD players. Other configurations include double layer DVDs (DVD-9) and two-sided discs (DVD-10, DVD-14 or DVD-18). Some labels are releasing DVD titles that are formatted as DVD-Audio on one side and DVD-Video on the other, the DualDisc being one such example. DualDisc is a type of double-sided Optical disc product developed by a group of record companies including EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG

There are some software players that support the playback of DVD-Audio discs, including WinDVD and PowerDVD. WinDVD (from Corel Corporation which had bought InterVideo) is a commercial video player and music player software for Microsoft CyberLink PowerDVD is a commercial Media player for Microsoft Windows and Linux.

^[4]ELS Surround one of the few vehicle audio systems which can play DVD-A

Preamplifier/Surround Processor interface

In order to play DVD-Audio, a preamplifier or surround controller with six analog inputs was originally required. ELS Surround is a premium car audio system developed by Grammy Award winning producer Elliot Scheiner and Panasonic. ^[5] Whereas DVD-Video audio formats such as Dolby Digital and DTS can be sent via the player's digital output to a receiver for conversion to analog form and distribution to speakers, DVD-Audio cannot be delivered via unencrypted digital audio link at sample rates higher than 48 kHz (i. Dolby Digital is the marketing name for a series of lossy audio compression technologies developed by Dolby DTS (also known as Digital Theater Systems) owned by DTS Inc ( is a multi-channel digital Surround sound format used for both commercial/theatrical e. , ordinary DVD-Video quality) due to concerns about digital copying. ^[5]

However encrypted digital formats have now been approved by the DVD Forum, the first of which was Meridian Audio's MHR (Meridian High Resolution). The High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI 1. The High-Definition Multimedia Interface ( HDMI) is a compact audio/video connector interface for transmitting uncompressed digital streams 1) also allows encrypted digital audio to be carried up to DVD-Audio specification (6 × 24-bit/96 kHz channels or 2 × 24-bit/192 kHz channels). The six channels of audio information can thus be sent to the amplifier by several different methods:

1. The 6 audio channels can be decrypted and extracted in the player and sent to the amplifier along 6 standard analog cables.
2. The 6 audio channels can be decrypted and then re-encrypted into an HDMI or IEEE-1394 (Firewire) signal and sent to the amplifier, which will then decrypt the digital signal and then extract the 6 channels of audio. HDMI and IEEE-1394 encryption are different from the DVD-A encryption and were designed as a general standard for a high quality digital interface. The amplifier has to be equipped with a valid decryption key or it won't play the disk.
3. The third option is via the S/PDIF (or TOSLINK) digital interface. S/PDIF specifies a Data Link Layer protocol and choice of Physical Layer specifications for carrying Digital audio TOSLINK or Optical Cable is a standardized Optical fiber connection system However, because of concerns over unauthorized copying, DVD-A players are required to handle this digital interface in one of the following ways:
   • Turn such an interface off completely. This option is preferred by the music publishers.
   • Downconvert the audio to a 2-channel 16-bit/48 kHz PCM signal. The music publishers are not enthusiastic about this because it permits the production of a CD-quality copy, something they still expect to sell, besides DVD-A.
   • Downconvert the audio to 2 channels, but keeping the original sample size and bit rate if the producer sets a flag on the DVD-A disc telling the player to do so.
4. A final option is to modify the player, capturing the high resolution digital signals before they are fed to internal D/A converters and convert it to S/PDIF, giving full range digital (but only stereo) sound. S/PDIF specifies a Data Link Layer protocol and choice of Physical Layer specifications for carrying Digital audio There exist already do-it-yourself solutions for some players. There also exists an option to equip a DVD-A player with multiple S/PDIF outputs, for full resolution multichannel digital output. See: Six channel S/P-DIF output board.

Sound quality

From a purely technical standpoint, the audio resolution of a DVD-Audio disc can be substantially higher than standard red book CD audio. Red Book is the standard for audio CDs ( Compact Disc Digital Audio system or CDDA) DVD-Audio supports bit depths up to 24-bit and sample rates up to 192 kHz, while CD audio is 16-bit, 44. 1 kHz. In both cases, the source recording may have been made at a much higher bit and sample rate, and down-converted for commercial release.

It is uncertain whether average listeners can hear the difference between DVD-Audio and CD-Audio, and many consumers do not regard any supposed quality improvements offered as sufficient reason to justify purchasing new playback equipment and repurchasing albums in higher-resolution formats. Many DVD-Audio releases are older, standard definition audio recordings that have been remixed in 5. 1 and upsampled to DVD-Audio's higher resolution. However, the fidelity of the upsampled audio will be limited by the source material quality and may not exceed the quality of existing CD releases of the same albums. When new recordings are made using high-resolution PCM encoding, a substantial difference in fidelity can be achieved.

Three of the major music labels, Universal Music, EMI and Warner Bros. Records and several smaller audiophile labels (such as AIX Records and DTS Entertainment) have released or are continuing to release albums on DVD-Audio, but the number is minimal compared to standard CDs. In the Music industry, a record label can be a Brand and a Trademark associated with the Marketing of music recordings and Music Universal Music Group (UMG is the largest Business group and family of Record labels in the Recording industry. The EMI Group is a British music company comprising the major record company EMI Music – which operates several labels and is based in Kensington in Warner Bros Records Inc is an American Record label that operates as a wholly owned Subsidiary of Warner Music Group. New high-definition titles have been released in standard DVD-Video format (which can contain 2-channel Linear PCM audio data ranging from 48 kHz/16-bit to 96 kHz/24-bit), "HDAD", which includes a DVD-Video format recording on one side and DVD-Audio on the other, CD/DVD packages, which can include the album on both CD and DVD-Audio, or DualDisc, which can contain DVD-Audio content on the DVD side. DualDisc is a type of double-sided Optical disc product developed by a group of record companies including EMI Music, Universal Music Group, Sony/BMG In addition, some titles that were initially released as a standalone DVD-Audio disc, such as The Grateful Dead's American Beauty and R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People, were re-released as a CD/DVD package or as a DualDisc. The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in the San Francisco Bay Area. American Beauty is the fifth album by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded between August and September 1970 and originally released in November 1970 by Warner REM is an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by Michael Stipe ( lead vocals) Peter Buck ( Guitar Automatic for the People is the eighth album by the American Alternative rock band R

Copy protection

DVD-Audio discs may optionally employ a copy protection mechanism called Content Protection for Prerecorded Media (CPPM). Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention, or copy restriction, is a technology for preventing the unauthorised reproduction Content Protection for Recordable Media and Pre-Recorded Media ( CPRM/CPPM) is a mechanism for controlling the copying moving and deletion of digital media on a host device ^[6] CPPM, managed by the 4C Entity, prevents users from extracting audio to computers and portable media players. The 4C Entity (which should be read out as "the four company entity" is a Consortium formed by IBM, Intel, Matsushita and Toshiba

Because DVD-Video's content-scrambling system (CSS) was quickly broken, DVD-Audio's developers sought a better method of blocking unauthorized duplications. Content Scramble System ( CSS) is a Digital Rights Management (DRM scheme used on almost all commercially produced DVD -Video discs They developed CPPM, which uses a media key block (MKB) to authenticate DVD-Audio players. In order to decrypt the audio, players must obtain a media key from the MKB, which also is encrypted. The player must use its own unique key to decrypt the MKB. If a DVD-Audio player's decryption key is compromised, that key can be rendered useless for decrypting future DVD-Audio discs. DVD-Audio discs can also utilize digital watermarking technology developed by the Verance Corporation, typically embedded into the audio once every thirty seconds. Digital watermarking is the process of embedding information into a digital signal If a DVD-Audio player encounters a watermark on a disc without a valid MKB, it will halt playback. ^[7] The 4C Entity also developed a similar specification, Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM), which is used on Secure Digital cards. Content Protection for Recordable Media and Pre-Recorded Media ( CPRM/CPPM) is a mechanism for controlling the copying moving and deletion of digital media on a host device Secure Digital ( SD) is a non-volatile Memory card format developed by Matsushita, SanDisk, and Toshiba for use in

DVD-Audio's copy protection was overcome in 2005^[7] by tools which allow data to be decrypted or converted to 6 channel . Year 2005 ( MMV) was a Common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. WAV files without going through lossy digital-to-analog conversion. WAV (or WAVE) short for Waveform Audio format, is a Microsoft and IBM Audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on In Electronics, a digital-to-analog converter ( DAC or D-to-A) is a device for converting a digital (usually binary code to an Analog signal Previously that conversion had required expensive equipment to retain all 6 channels of audio rather than having it downmixed to stereo. 51, Multichannel audio, Multichannel music Surround 3D Surround 5 In the digital method, the decryption is done by a commercial software player which has been patched to allow access to the unprotected audio.

In 2007 the encryption scheme was overcome with a tool called dvdcpxm. In 12th February 2008 a program called DVD-Audio Explorer 2008 was released, containing aforementioned libdvdcpxm coupled with an open source MLP decoder. 2008 ( MMVIII) is the current year in accordance with the Gregorian calendar, a Leap year that started on Tuesday of the Common For the drum and bass musician see Decoder (artist A decoder is a device which does the reverse of an Encoder, undoing the ^[8]

Like DVD-Video decryption, such tools may be illegal to use in the United States under the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The United States of America —commonly referred to as the The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA is a United States Copyright Law which implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property While the Recording Industry Association of America has been successful in keeping these tools off websites, they are still distributed on P2P file sharing networks and newsgroups,^[9] Additionally, in 2007 the widely-used commercial software DVDFab Platinum added DVD-Audio decryption, allowing users to backup a full DVD-A image to ISO. See Shared resource for the conventional meaning of file sharing File sharing refers to the providing and receiving of digital files over a ^[10]

DVD-Audio authoring software

Normal DVD(Video) authoring software usually does not support DVD-Audio creation, so there is some special software:

Macintosh

• Sonic Solutions DVD Creator AV – The first DVD-Audio authoring solution available. A spin off of the popular high end DVD Video authoring package. It allows DVD-Audio authoring at the command line level only. Still widely used but no longer sold or supported by Sonic Solutions.
• Sonic Studio SonicStudio HD – Macintosh based tool used for High Density audio mastering and to prepare audio for DVD-A authoring in One Click DVD.
• Sonic Studio [1]
• Sonic OneClick DVD – Converts prepared Sonic Studio EDLs into binary MLP files to be used in the authoring tool. Also generates scriptFile information to be added to DVD Creator AV projects.

Windows

• Sonic Solutions DVD-Audio Creator
• Cirlinca DVD-AUDIO Solo
• Minnetonka Audio DiscWelder Bronze, Steel and Chrome II (with SurCode MLP)
• Steinberg WaveLab
• DigiOn Audio 2
• Gear Pro Mastering Edition
• DVD audio tools package (see below). WaveLab is a Digital audio editor by Steinberg aimed at the professional as well as the semi-professional market

Linux

• A project called DVD audio Tools provides free/open source DVD-Audio authoring tools for Linux. Free software or software libre is Software that can be used studied and modified without restriction and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified Open source is a development methodology which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge
  Windows (console application) binaries are also available. DVD-Audio/Video discs (aka Hybrid or Universal DVDs) are also supported.

See also

• Meridian Lossless Packing

References

External links

• The 4C Entity LLC – Licensors of the Content Protection for Prerecorded Media (CPPM) specification.