I'm a huge audiophile and would like to know if anyone has a DVD-A disc? DVD-A is cool and all but where the heck can you even buy a disc like that? I went into a couple of music stores and one of the stores said "you're looking for a DVD what?" and the other one said they don't carry any. So how are we supposed to take advantage of the TL's new stereo system when there isn't even such thing available? I see that Amazon.com has a few disks but get real, I haven't even heard of those people who have DVD-A discs. It's definately not mainstream music. Funny how the articles I've seen which writes about DVD-A is saying stuff like "they're now readily available" or "it's very common" or just stuff like you can pop into your local music store and buy whatever disk you desire in DVD-A format, which is totally false. Any thoughts?

 

I bought one today at HMV in Kingston. They are expensive but they do play on a DVD player as well as a DVD-A. It was expensive $32.99 and there are not many titles yet. HMV said they are starting to get more requests.

 

holy horsecrap, I would rather get 3 DVDs instead

 

I bought Rumors in DVD-A at Circuit City for the same price as a CD. I played two or three tracks in a 04 TL - sounded AWESOME. At home on the DVD player I could also get lots of additional info on the making of the album and photos of the early Fleetwood Mac group. For a long time fan, it was cool.
There is a very limited supply of DVD-A's. My short list includes Hotel California (Eagles), Captain and Me (Dobbie's), Reptile (Clapton) and Two Against Nature (Steely Dan)

 

I bought the new Fleetwood Mac stuff. Hope it is as good as Rumours. The place I bought from didn't have that or any of the others you mention. Its good to know they exist. Eagle and Steely Dan are two of my favourites. The $32.99 was Canadian dollars. I forgot to say that in my earlier post.

 

ah, makes more sense now, phew
amazon has a bunch of those titles

 

I have had a DVD-A player at home for about two years. There are plenty of e-tailers that carry them, but you can also find them at Best Buy, too.

 

Future shop has some online for 26.99 each

 

Given the large number of universal players that have hit the market recently, I'm surprised the TL's stereo doesn't also read SACD's. It certainly would have given us a much larger catalogue to choose from.

:goldfish:

 

SACD is a proprietary standard from Sony and it is a competitor to DVD-A. I'm glad they've chosen DVD-A vs. SACD...

 

Best Buy (B&M) has Sting - Brand New Day for $15.99. Great album!

 

Whether or not one prefers DVD-Audio is beside the point. I haven't actually heard either format enough to have an opinion. I was merely saying that it would be nice to have a choice.

 

A few updates/corrections:

Pioneer has a player out now ($170 at Best Buy) that plays both DVD-audio and SACD, so even if they are competing formats they can co-exist in a single player.

To see what's available in DVD-audio go to http://buydvdnow.com/Merchant2/merch...ategory_Code=D (note that there are more titles on the Next page). You can buy them there at about 10% off list.

Note that some DVD-audio discs will play on older DVD-video units, but that is only because there is a separate audio track that is NOT six channel output. It will sound like a CD or the audio portion of a DVD-video, not like a DVD-audio disc. Your player has to have DVD-audio capability and six separate audio cables connected to the receiver to really process DVD-audio.

 

FYI - an insert that comes with the TL brochure has a listing of all the DVD-Audio discs. Seems pretty expansive to me (for being newer technology). Plus, I'm all set as one of my favorite bands is re-releasing their whole catalogue (it seems) in DVD-A (R.E.M.).

I am not surprised that they did not incorporate SACD given that the newest Home Theater magazine listed all the current DVD players and there were at least 10 times as many players supported DVD-A compared to SACD (or combo).

 

Most DVD-A discs have a DTS or DD 5.1 track as well as DVD-A.
Plus a hi-res 2 channel track. Say 24 bit/96 Khz

There are very, very few combo players SACD/DVD-A out there. The current talk of the town is the Denon 2900. But it's quite a bit above $500.

DTS Audio is also excellent and supported by the new ELS system. It just doesn't have the resolution of DVD-A. But still offers 5.1 discrete channels of music.
The Big difference with DVD-A over DTS and DD is the resolution. DVD-A comes atleast 24bit/96Khz then can goe as high as 192 Khz.

SACD is also High resolution, but they just recently started introducing 5.1 discrete channels, prior to that they were just hi-res 2 channel format.

The biggest problems with these formats are the restrictions put on them by the RIAA. Neither DVD-A or SACD or TRUE digital (at least in a home system.) It's no allowed. So your player must first convert them to analog, they then get fed through a 6 channel analog out on your player to a 6 channel (external decoder in) on your pre/pro or Receiver. Then get converted back to a digital signal.

I have about 75 DTS and DVD-A discs.

If you want to here what a 5.1 mix can really do, pick up "Surrounded" by an artist named Tipper. Quite an amazing piece of work. The Police DVD-A is another great disk, and Queen's Night at the Opera remixed for DVD-A is stunning. THis disc has actually been one of the top recommended DVD-A discs by the industry guru's for a couple years running now.

 

Joe? as a huge audiophile. What equipment are you running at home? If you don't mind posting a little sidebar.

 

I have Metallica's Black Album in DVD-A which was bought at Best Buy. I've owned a DVD audio player for about two years now and it's the only disc I've bought. Given the limited amount of good titles to choose from at the moment, I haven't really gotten interested in the new format.

 

Wow, after reading what you wrote I guess I'm not a huge audiophile anymore! But well, at home I do have 2 DVD players each with DTS encoding and since both are Sony, both are capable of playing SACD. 1 of those sets is a home theatre systems with 5 individual speakers (with stands) and the subwoofer ofcourse.
On the computer is where I love my audio. I have the SB Audigy 2 platinum soundcard with Megaworks THX 6.1 speakers.
The DVD-A was the one thing that I didn't know too much about maybe partly because they're not very popular Canada or (perhaps I should say Toronto area, where I live, to be more accurate). I had a problem when I kept reading articles by journalists and whatnot saying how "mainstream" DVD-A audio already is which to me is not true, not in Canada anyways. I guess its because my definition of "mainstream" is when you can readily choose DVD-A discs or CDs from artists like Britney Spears or Eminem or something along those lines.

 

Here are some online sources for DVD-A discs.
Copy and paste links into the address window.

http://www.dvdplanet.com/browse_subcategory.asp?categoryid=305

http://www.dvdempire.com/index.asp?olduserid=84251353641504&site_id=12&user id=84251353641504&redir=1

http://store.acousticsounds.com/store.cfm?field=format&do=search&searchtext=18

http://www.circuitcity.com/frame1.jsp?c=1&b=g&upper=head.jsp&inleftcat=Music& lower=clickthrough.jsp&redirectTo=http%3a%2f%2fcci ty.thestore24.com%2fPop%2fsearch_audioDVD.asp%3fsi %3dccity-prod

http://www.avelectronic.com/Nav-TVTuner.htm

 

I have purchased 3 from buydvdnow.com; I do not have the car yet so I do not have a player. They cost $15.99 and $16.99. I received the disks in just days at normal shipping. From what I can tell more and more titles are on the way.