Battle looms between next-generation audio formats

LONDON - There are no less than three "next-generation" formats for digital audio disks that are about to hit the market. In fact, two of these formats are already available, albeit in limited supply.

Developed by Sony and Philips, Super Audio CD is a higher resolution version of the conventional audio CD format. Music stored on a standard audio CD has a sampling frequency of 44.1KHz, but Super Audio CDs more than double this to 100KHz. When CDs were first introduced, many musicians and hi-fi buffs argued that digital recording failed to capture the real atmosphere of a musical performance and that traditional analogue recording techniques were still superior.

However, the increased quality of Super Audio CD finally allows digital recording techniques to match the quality of analogue recording.

Another advantage of Super Audio CDs is that they have much higher capacity than conventional CDs. You can store 4.7 gigabytes of data on a Super Audio CD, compared with about 650 megabytes on a standard CD. This means that it's possible to include a standard stereo version of a recording alongside a multi-channel recording designed for six-speaker Surroundsound speaker systems.

Sony already has a Super Audio player on sale but before you rush out and buy a Super Audio CD player, you might want to pause and consider DVD-Audio.

DVD-Audio is completely different from DVD-Video. Most of the space on a DVD-Video disk is taken up by video, and that doesn't leave too much space for a high-quality audio soundtrack. With DVD-Audio there's a huge amount of room for audio and the quality goes way up.

The capacity and frequency range of DVD-Audio disks is similar to that of Super Audio CDs, so it would seem likely that the two types of disk will produce similar audio quality.

And, as with Super Audio CDs, the chances are that you'll have to buy a new player if you want to use DVD-Audio disks. Most DVD players are video only and won't play DVD-Audio disks, so you'll probably need to buy a new player even if you've already forked out for a DVD-Video player.

There's one more format vying for your attention – one that you've probably already heard without even realising it. Developed by Digital Theatre Systems, the DTS format has been around since 1993, when Steven Spielberg used it for the soundtrack of Jurassic Park.

Many DVD films also have a DTS soundtrack sitting on the DVD disk alongside the standard Dolby soundtrack, although you'll need a DVD player or speaker system with a special DTS decoder built in if you want to hear it.

The company is now trying to expand into the audio market with DTS music CDs. You won't find any of these in your local record store, but there are quite a few specialist audio companies who sell DTS CDs over the internet.

A DTS CD won't work in an ordinary CD player, but you can buy DTS CD players on the Net, and you can also play DTS CDs in a DTS-compatible DVD player. Just to show how confusing all this is, there are plenty of DTS-compatible DVD players that can play DTS music CDs, but hardly any DVD players that can currently play DVD-Audio.

It's difficult to predict which format will win, but it will probably be a shoot-out between DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD. The DTS format is well supported in the film industry but seems too low profile to make much of a splash in the brand-conscious consumer-audio market.

- INDEPENDENT