Media type | Optical disc |
---|---|
Encoding | Meridian Lossless Packing or uncompressed LPCM[1] |
Capacity | up to 8.5 GB |
Read mechanism | 640 nm wavelength semiconductor laser |
Standard | DVD Books, Part 4, DVD-Audio Book, DVD Audio Recording Book [2][3][4] |
Developed by | DVD Forum |
Usage | Audio storage |
Extended from | |
Extended to | High Fidelity Pure Audio Blu-ray |
DVD-Audio (commonly abbreviated as DVD-A) is a digital format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. DVD-Audio uses most of the storage on the disc for high-quality audio and is not intended to be a video delivery format.
The standard was published in March 1999[3] and the first discs entered the marketplace in 2000. DVD-Audio was in a format war with Super Audio CD (SACD), and along with consumers' tastes tending towards downloadable music, these factors meant that neither high-quality disc achieved considerable market traction; DVD-Audio has been described as "extinct" by 2007.[5] DVD-Audio remains a niche market but some independent online labels offer a wider choice of titles.