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DVD-Audio
Is Here (Sort Of)
By
Richard Hardesty
DVD-Audio, one of the competing formats touted as
the replacement for the compact disc, has been
"just around the corner" for a very long time. This
new format supports a broad variety of recording
standards with many different choices of PCM
digital sample rate and sample resolution. It can
provide very high theoretical resolution for stereo
recordings (up to 192kHz/24-bit) and provide
multichannel capability at slightly reduced
resolutions utilizing the Meridian Lossless Packing
system. MLP is a bit-for-bit lossless compression
scheme designed by Meridian and licensed by Dolby
Laboratories. DVD-Audio can provide various kinds
of copy protection for content providers and
therein lies a problem. Copy protection issues have
been blamed for the delay of the launch of
DVD-Audio. Based on my limited experience with the
first two players, I have my doubts about whether
copy protection has been the only difficulty facing
the format.
Regardless of what caused the delay, I have two of
the first available DVD-Audio players in my
reference system now. They are the Pioneer DV-AX10
and the Technics DVD-A10 units. We've waited a long
time for the industry to straighten out copy
protection issues and other problems, and the wait
seems to be over. Hardware is here now and software
should follow shortly, which makes my job as a
reviewer more difficult. As I write this, I have
only two DVD-Audio sample discs to use in
evaluating the sound quality of these new players,
and the disc that Technics sent me (produced by
Warner) won't play on the Pioneer machine! I'm
scrambling to obtain more so that I can give these
players a fair shake. I'll test both machines as
best I can, given the shortage of software demo
material, and report on what I hear whether I get
more software or not.
The Pioneer DV-AX10 is a high-end statement piece
that weighs as much as a good amplifier. It plays
DVD-Audio, DVD-Video, SACD, CD-R and CD-RW, and it
has progressive scan video output capability.
Pioneer has developed their own proprietary
de-interlacing chip set, so the video performance
of this player should be interesting, too.
The Technics DVD-A10 is more "popularly
priced"&emdash;it costs about one fourth as much as
the Pioneer. It plays DVD-Audio and DVD-Video discs
and outputs an interlaced video signal. Reviews of
both products are in progress now.
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