DVD-Audio

What Does DVD-Audio Mean?

DVD-Audio (DVD-A) is a digital audio format that is committed to DVD storage. It is similar to compact disc, but with much greater capacity for higher quality and additional space for storing digital media. The DVD Forum (a consortium of technology business leaders, including Hitachi, Thomson, Sony, Toshiba and Time Warner, among others) released the DVD-Audio specification in March of 1999.

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Techopedia Explains DVD-Audio

CD audio is capable of a sampling rate of 44,100 samples per second, while DVD-Audio’s sampling rate is more than twice that. Further, dual-layer DVD-Audio has twice the sampling rate of standard DVD-Audio.

DVD-Audio also has higher bit depth per sample, and is capable of 5.1 audio (which consists of six channels, compared with a CD’s two). Needless to say, the potential for quality is much greater in DVD-Audio than CD audio, even though the latter format is arguably more popular and has sufficient quality.

Nevertheless, DVD-Audio has become virtually extinct as a format. In spite of its high quality, use of DVD-Audio has declined since it can only be played in DVD players (not regular CD players).

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…