Explain the difference between Multi channel music, Super Audio CD and DVD Audio?

The CD has been the dominant music format for many years now, but over the last three years higher quality formats have been developed which aim to give better quality music reproduction.

he ultimate goal is to achieve the sound quality and open expressive sound produced by vinyl without the associated spurious noise, but with the convenience CD’s.

The new music formats DVD Audio and SACD both utilise much high sampling rates than CD and also offer far greater dynamic range and bandwidth. This allows far greater frequency responses with improved dynamics which produces a more realistic and natural reproduction.

SACD and DVD Audio both also support multi channel music mixes which are created to recreate the ambience and effect of listen to the music live at a concert. Both SACD and DVD Audio require specific machines for playback but most manufactures now include SACD and DVD Audio decoders in their DVD players.

In our experience the different formats have different advantages to suit certain applications:

DVD Audio is fantastic for live multi channel concert performances when replayed through a good quality surround amplifier. DVD quality video playback combined with 5.1 digital sound quality truly makes you feel like you’re at the concert.

SACD is far better suited to high quality stereo reproduction where the huge sampling rate and dynamic range result in a highly detailed sound. The result is an extremely accurate and precise reproduction, capturing all of the ambience and harmonics of the original performance. The results from a top quality SACD stereo system are breath taking and really show the vast improvement over CD.

Most SACD discs now come with both stereo and multi channel mixes but we have yet to hear a multi channel recording that sounds anywhere close to the stereo mix. We would highly recommend leaving the multi channel side to DVD Audio.

Pros and Cons overview