The Forgotten Format War: Toshiba’s "DVD-Audio" vs Sony’s "Super Audio CD"

By Devindra | Published: January 9, 2008

All this talk about the HD DVD and Blu-ray format war being over has reminded me of a similar situation involving two other competing media formats. Not many people realize that the current format war was not the first “high-definition” war between Toshiba and Sony. The battle for high-definition audio supremacy has actually been going on for some time now, long before we ever caught word of these new-fangled HD video formats.

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Toshiba’s DVD-Audio format, along with Sony’s Super Audio CD, both fought to be the evolutionary high-definition standard from the now ubiquitous CD. Sporting support for higher resolution audio quality, surround sound, and a wealth of features that would make any audiophile woozy, they were both fitting contenders for the next great audio format.

But don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of them.

The Contenders

First up is DVD-Audio (DVD-A), a standard that’s obviously connected to the DVD video discs we all know and love. Launched in 2000, DVD-A was developed by the DVD Forum, a group which includes Toshiba, Philips, Pioneer, and surprisingly enough, Sony. The discs hold up to 8.5GB of data, just like your average DVD. The format supports a bit depth of 24-bit, 5.1 audio tracks encoded up to 96kHz, and 2-channel stereo tracks up to 192kHz.

In comparison, CD Audio resolution is 16-bit at a sample rate of 44.1kHz. Even if you have no idea what the numbers mean, just trust that those higher numbers make DVD-A a significant leap beyond CDs.

Super Audio CD (SACD), on the other hand, comes from Sony and Philips, the two companies behind the audio CD. It appeared in 1999, also uses a standard DVD disc as its vehicle, and is available in stereo and surround sound configurations. SACD is stored in a format called Direct Stream Digital (DSD). Unfortunately, I think it may be nearly impossible to break down the technical specifications of DSD because the only explanations I can find sound like this:

DSD is 1-bit, has a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz, and makes use of noise shaping quantization techniques in order to push 1-bit quantization noise up to inaudible ultrasonic frequencies. This gives the format a greater dynamic range and wider frequency response than the CD.

Source: Wikipedia

Given that sci-fi sounding explanation, I’m fairly certain it sounds significantly better than standard CDs.

Fans of these formats, myself included, praise them for their record-like warmth and incredible resolution and dynamic range. If you ever get a chance to demo one of these formats in an ideal listening environment, do so. It will instantly make sense of all the technical nonsense in this section.

Backwards Compatibility

Both formats take their earlier siblings into account and offer some level of backwards compatibility. Many DVD-A discs offer Dolby Digital and DTS tracks which are playable in standard DVD players. “Hybrid” SACDs, the most popular kind, include a CD audio track on one layer of the disc, while the high resolution SACD audio content sits on another.

I guess that sort of makes up for both formats being horribly incompatible with one another. Sort of.

DualDisc, another audio disc format, aimed to introduce the benefits of higher resolution audio to consumers gradually by offering a standard CD on one side of the disc with DVD content on another. The DVD content was never standardized, which led to confusion when marketing the discs. It could include documentaries and music videos, or, it could include a DVD-A version of the album. Interestingly enough, Sony is one of the labels putting out DualDisc albums, although they make sure not to step on the toes of SACD by never including full resolution DVD-A content on their DVD sides.

You Call This a War?

Is a war fought if nobody cares? That’s what we would have to ask ourselves when considering the epic battle between DVD-A and SACD. Released at a time when most people hadn’t yet realized the full surround sound audio potential of DVDs, these formats were the answer to a problem nobody noticed.

Consumers were more than satisfied with CDs, few had the speaker and audio receiver setup to utilize these formats to their full potential, and the formats were simply too expensive and confusing. A few years after their launch, the iPod was released and the face of music changed forever. The music-going public clamored for lower-quality portable music instead of “clunky” optical discs.

Subsequently, neither format truly took off. The format war is now at a stalemate as combo DVD-A/SACD players are becoming more common. The Creative Audigy 2 sound cards supported playback of DVD-A discs, and recent versions of Power DVD on PCs support it as well. There is currently no way to play SACDs on any sort of computer.

Sony also included SACD support in the Playstation 3, although it was removed from the recent 40GB version for cost-cutting reasons. PS3 owners take note: At this time, you can only listen to SACDs if you’re using an HDMI connection to your receiver.

Parallels with the HD DVD/Blu-ray war

In reading this article, I’m sure you’ve recognized some parallels between the DVD-A/SACD fiasco and the format war we’re facing today. Some similarities I’ve noticed include:

  • Forcing of next-generation formats on an unwilling public
  • Formats required many consumers to buy much more equipment than just the DVD-A/SACD players
  • Lower-quality digital media formats (iTunes store, online video streaming) steal much of the thunder from the higher quality formats
  • Hybrid-discs are released to ease adoption of the new format
  • Draconian DRM worries make the formats more restrictive to consumers
  • Combo-players bring the war to a stalemate and the formats co-exist happily ever after

I’ll dig into these and other similarities in a future post, but for now, I think it’s enough that we recognize they exist. It’s probably not that unusual that there are so many similarities, after all, we should probably expect this sort of technological samsara by now. After a point, the cycles of death and rebirth that our technological formats face will become all the more predictable.

Where to Go From Here

Obviously, neither DVD-A or SACD have been wildly successful, but I wouldn’t write them off just yet. Remember that the audio CD was originally launched in 1980 and it took about a decade for it to truly take off. When it comes to traditional audio formats, it can simply take a while for the public to accept it.

Now that more consumers are considering surround sound in their home theaters, they’re also unwittingly optimizing their setups for DVD-A and SACD. If these formats can cement themselves in more players, publicize their benefits, and make the discs cheaper and more readily available, consumer adoption is sure to follow.

Let’s just hope they accomplish this before a high-definition successor to MP3 appears.

Update 1:

Just an update for anyone interested in hearing me discuss this further: My friends and I will be covering this format war and its parallels to the HD DVD/Blu-ray mess on the second episode of our podcast, The Watchers. Check it out early next week if you’re interested in this post, or just film and television in general. I promise you’ll be entertained!

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  • There are already lots of audio formats nowadays and still a lot more coming..
  • The biggest thing hurting DVD-A is the lack of titles. I love the sound of DVD audio but I only own 5 discs.
  • Josh
    I don't know when this article was published, but I know of many computers that can play SACD's.

    On a sidenote, the Who's Tommy sounds amazing on SACD (they cleaned up and brought Keith's drumming out moreso than any previous release)
  • frank
    Hm,that sounds interesting,are You sure they
    play both layers?Could You please give us a few
    examples as to which pc's play SACD's?
  • JRC
    Sony should make peace with Toshiba by dumping sacd and giving all blu-ray players the ability to play DVD-A discs. Music busines needs to be in the DVD space for albums/concert content in a big way. iTunes is great for singles but I don't want to buy albums there...
  • 1982. CDs first hit the market around October of 1982, if I recall correctly. You are right, though, it did take a while for the format to overtake LPs and cassettes -- somewhere around 1988 or '89, wasn't it?
  • Troy
    >>>"CD - 44 thousand samples every second (44,000)
    >>>"DVD A - 96 to 192 thousand samples every second (192,000)
    >>>"SACD - 2 million samples every second (2,000,000)"


    This is waaaaay too simplified. One must also take into account how BITS each of those samples uses:

    CD == 44,000*16 == 704 kbit/s per channel
    DVDA== 192,000*24 == 4600 kbit/s per channel
    SACD==2,000,000*1 == 2000 kbit/s per channel

    Thus in terms of raw data captured, the DVD-Audio has more than the SACD. I don't know if that means DVD-A sounds better? I only know that there are more bits captured than the SACD.



    >>>"It was obvious from the start that DCC would go
    >>>nowhere, and it indeed died shortly afterwards.
    >>>Minidisc got a bit further, but never got much success."<<<


    Why is it it obvious that Digital Compact Cassette would fail? To me it seems like an obvious upgrade..... you can continue using your 1000+ library of analog cassettes, rather than throw them away, and enjoy better sound with digital upgrades.

    I like backwards-compatibility.
  • emarkay
    I for one will never forget the Elcassette. :)
    If only the greed of the executives was replaced by the cooperation of the engineers, we'd all have the best possible world of technology.
  • RIF
    @Raziel
    DAT and Mini-Disc was not in competition. Mini-disc and Philips DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) came at the same time and wied for the same market. They both offered some way of recording compressed music. It was obvious from the start that DCC would go nowhere, and it indeed died shortly afterwards. Minidisc got a bit further, but never got much success.

    DAT came before these and was the first possibility to digital record sound in a CD quality (actually just above).

    Remember in those days the recordable CD had not yet been invented by Philips and a single CD was 3-5 times larger than harddisk capacity. Therefore DAT had a chance. But the chance was blown by very expensive DAT tape decks and 1-time copy DRM.
  • me
    Do you want a simple explaination of the 1-bit audio approach? Think of a light bulb that cannot be dimmed - it only works at one voltage, and gives off a constant brightness. However you can switch it on/off as fast as you like. Do this fast enough and no-one can see it. If it is off half the time, you get 50% brightness, but you can adjust the timings for any amount from 0% to 100%. So you have complete control.

    A normal CD uses 16 bit sound levels - the sound wave can be any of 65536 levels, and that level is measured at 40-something kilohertz. If you use one bit, but a much higher sampling frequency, you can get the same effect, and SACD goes higher again. Any ugly effects of this switching (dithering) happens at frequencies way beyond what your ear can hear, but you would see them on an oscilloscope.
  • Raziel
    Very good article; but i think it should be mentioned that the current war is the third one of its kind...Anyone remembers about the other next generation Audio format war from the early 1990s?

    I'm talking about the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) vs the Mini-Disc, the exact same story back then; two rivaling formats in a market where CDs already dominated and satisfied the needs for the average consumer and beyond; (and Cassette tapes were still common enough to market a tape based format). And again there were two formats totally uncalled for and therefore, mostly ignored.

    The only plus of those formats is that they allowed digital audio recording in a time when analog mix tapes were still the way to go; CD burners were unheard of, and thus some people found them appealing as a private recording, primary from their CD collection.

    I guess that third is the charm, right? To all consumer electronics companies: please learn from the past and stop doing this to your customers.
  • Jim
    To make the comparison of these formats easy for anyone, I usually point out the sampling rate. The more samples you take over a given period of time the better the reproduction of the original music. Not unlike the resolution of a photograph measured by the number of pixels in a digital camera for a single exposure. The more the better. So, the approximate sampling rates for the formats are:

    CD - 44 thousand samples every second (44,000)
    DVD A - 96 to 192 thousand samples every second (192,000)
    SACD - 2 million samples every second (2,000,000)

    To me, the SACD is far and away the best sounding.
  • Greg Andrew
    Oh, and the total number of dvd audio and sacd discs sold in 2006 - the seventh year both formats were available (SACD having been introduced in 1999, DVD-Audio in 2000) - was 1 million in the United States. There were more vinyl records sold that year.

    These are only the latest two of the many new audio formats that have failed in the 25 years since the cd was introduced. The early 1990s saw the format war between DCC, DAT, and Minidisc - a war that nobody won, since consumers refused to move to the new digital formats from the analog cd
  • Wow, some excellent comments here! Let me respond to a few:

    Keylimesoda: You're right about SACD playback over the PS3 analog ports, but I didn't mention those because that only supports stereo output. Thanks for the correction! HDMI is still the only way to get the full benefits of SACD from the PS3 though.

    Vex: I didn't mean to offend anybody, but you have to admit, far fewer in the general public know about these formats than they did about HD DVD and Bluray when that war started out. It's the fault of the manufacturers who never really publicized DVD A or SACD.

    PS3Owner and Greg: You're right about those stats, I think I just looked up the wrong article when trying to source that information. I was just a kid in the 80s, so I didn't have any first-hand knowledge ;)

    DVD-A Owner: I'm in total agreement with you. With the music companies focusing on loudness in CD quality, and a public ignorant to how that ruins their music, there's little chance we'll see either of these formats truly take off...
  • Greg Andrew
    As the previous poster said, it certainly did not take compact discs 10 years to take off - not even close.

    First off, the cd player wasn't even introduced in the US until 1983 (It had been introduced abroad a year earlier) By 1986, people were buying 3 million players and 53 million discs a year. By 1990, worldwide disc sales were approaching one billion a year.

    The CD player was, to quote a 1985 Time Magazine article, "the fastest selling machine in home electronics history."
  • Format wars are nearly done. The last format will be "the internet."
  • DVD-A owner
    The real problem with these next generation audio players is that your average joe can't see the benefit. People didn't upgrade from LP to CD because they sounded better - on the contrary, audiophiles in general still use LPs when they want superior sound. It was the convenience of a much smaller format, that didn't need turned over, and had many other benefits to it.

    Now, the new convenient music format is the mp3 (or aac, or wma, or whatever), and so that's where the standard consumer goes. He/she lacks the inclination to buy the expensive audio equipment it takes to hear the difference, because he/she is perfectly happy with the way things are now. It takes a real audiophile (read: snob) to go out of their way.

    So frankly I don't think either of these formats will ever gain ground. Higher definition audio will only come when it is convenient as an mp3 and fits on an nth generation iPod.
  • Hans Nayron
    The biggest thing hurting DVD-A is the lack of titles. I love the sound of DVD audio but I only own 5 discs (compared to 3000 Cds/1000 LPs). If the majors and indies would release more titles it would be my first choice over vinyl.
  • vex
    "Is a war fought if nobody cares?"

    I guess audiophiles and surroundophiles rate as "nobody". For those that were there in the trenches, the war was a bloody one. Classical music fanatics (of which I am not one) won that war, because there are TONS of classical SACDs in print right now, both in stereo and surround.

    The mass market flocked to portability via compressed audio formats and couldn't give a flying fig about audio quality or surround sound. The rules of the game changed in a big way such that DVD-A and SACD really had no hope to succeed beyond their niche markets.
  • keylimesoda
    Quick correction: SACD playback on a PS3 does not require HDMI, you can do it over the normal stereo out (I use a PS3 as my primary SACD player).

    While we're at it, the PS3 offers some very nice CD upsampling options--something normally only found on far more expensive CD players.
  • PS3 Owner
    Good article, but I disagree with the assertion that it took 10 years for the audio CD to take off. It may have taken them that long to surpass LP sales, but audio CDs on their own were a rapid success with audiophiles, with media and players available at mass-market prices as early as 1984.
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