An outlaw-phile/audiophile apprised me of this:

dts & surround audio formats .

I linked to it and found very interesting findings. Perhaps this has been discussed here, previously, but I've not seen it. Please reply & clue me in if needed.

What they have is material mastered for dts and other formats, including 5.1. This appears not to be SACD at first glance. They do have DVD-A, however. Interestingly they have a deal where you buy two and get another at no cost. Playing dts would, of course, exclude regular CD players, but would play on a current DVD player such as Oppo or others. Should play also on my Sony 955.

Is this something new or has my head been in the sand? Haven't seen traffic on this forum about this. For us audiophiles this is exciting.

Yeah, these have been out for a couple of years now, I believe since the late '90s, but I think the format is pretty much dead now.

I have Sting's Brand New Day on this format and even though it's not quite my kinda music, I must say it sounds damn good in terms of clarity and the separation of instruments amongst channels.

A lot of these are DVD-Audio discs that include standard DVD-Video (either on the same side or on the flip side) with a DTS track. Both of my Blue Man Group DVD's are this way (Audio and The Complex). It was a nice compromise for people who didn't have DVD-Audio player.

Are you sure? DVD-As can have DTS tracks, but I'm pretty sure DTS-Surround discs are audio only.

Thanks for info. I guess head was in sand.
I'll get a few and will report on them. Thanks for filling me in.

If you shop at Best Buy, browse around their CD section. My local store has quite a few buried in the racks.

Thanks.
I'll do that.
Trouble is (my problem) nearest BestBuy or Circuit City is 160 miles. We're way way way out in the "boonies". It's a good thing I have good material to listen to

You're right that it's a mix of DVD-A with DTS tracks, DTS on conventional DVD-V, and apparently a number of DTS CD's. The online catalog differentiates between the two. If the format is listed as "5.1 Music Disc" I'm pretty sure that it's a CD with DTS data, but the ones with the format listed as "DVD-Audio" are actual DVD-A discs complete with MLP track and a separate DTS track that will play on a standard DVD player and there are a few others that are listed as "DVD-Video." The only ones that I have are DVD-Audio discs, though, so I haven't ever messed with the Music Discs to know exactly what they are. The Music Discs and DVD-Audio discs seem to be the two most common, with the Music Discs maybe having an edge in number of titles.

These CD's are in fact great. I just wish the format didn't die so quickly. There are so many more artists I would love to hear on surround sound formats. Don't get me wrong, 2 Channel stereo is pure music. Surround is simply a different listening experience. Why would it die so quickly?

Here's a temporary note. Gonk wrote:

the ones with the format listed as "DVD-Audio" are actual DVD-A discs complete with MLP track and a separate DTS track that will play on a standard DVD player

Temporary note because I just last night placed an order for a few discs. Mean while my "outlaw-phile" friend received his. We both have Sony 955s and Ooppo's. He says that although thee DVD-As supposedly have a dts track they won't play on the Sony 955 (it has dts and SACD capability). It does play on the Oppo. I'll update this "tempo" note when I get my discs.

It is a shame that surround music has fared so poorly in the marketplace, especially since many of the reasons for its failure were preventable. DVD-Audio and SACD both came to market at around the same time. The two competing formats both offered high-resolution audio, with surround standard on DVD-Audio from the get-go and added to SACD in short order as a reaction to DVD-A. The format war led to confusion in the marketplace, especially when the average consumer was quite content with the CD. Then there was over-zealous copy protection on both formats that prevented digital audio output during the formative years of both formats, leaving us forced to use multichannel analog connections and making it very difficult to own players for both formats. Digital output options exist for both now, but IEEE-1394 never saw hardware support because it couldn't support both formats until both had basically settled into "niche" status (at best) in the marketplace and HDMI has had its own share of problems achieving presence in hardware. And of course it didn't help that studio support was spotty and many stores never offered much selection.

The topic of DVD-Audio/SACD and HD DVD/Blu-ray was discussed a few months ago in my Advanced Digital Mixing class a couple months ago. Like you said Gonk, they came out at around the same time. This certainly set up competition right away. What's more is that players that offer support of both only pro-long the life of the loser. The same thing is beginning to happen with HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. It's the DVD-Audio/SACD war all over again.

You are quite right. The software libraries for HD-DVD and Blu-ray are turning out to be a bit stronger than those that developed for DVD-Audio and SACD, but otherwise the similarities are striking - which is why some people continue to worry about the future of HD optical discs. The HD format war is not likely to play out exactly the same way that the high-res audio disc format war did, but it is still not a situation that is healthy for HD optical discs in the long term.

So do you think Blu-Ray will come out on top? Or are they both doomed?

I think Blu-ray's software library gives it a definite advantage, but Toshiba has done a much better job with hardware than anybody in the Blu-ray camp has. At one point last year, I started to wonder if Blu-ray was going to survive its launch at all. At this point, they've made up most of the ground they lost but I still don't think they're ready to claim any sort of definitive victory.

In response to this thread gonk wrote:

DVD-As can have DTS tracks, but I'm pretty sure DTS-Surround discs are audio only.

And I said when I received them I'd give update. Here 'tis. They sound fabulous. The discs are indeed audio-only, though there is a tracklist and some choices.

I bought three: Les Brown, Chick Corea, Brazilian Jazz. They sound incredible. My understanding is that they were recorded for this format, so they sound correct. Of course, I'm playing the Oppo thru 990-7700.

I have(on dvd-a or dvd-v)

bjork - surrounded collection :dts
hotel california - eagles :dts
harvest - neil young :dts
wind & wuthering - genesis :dts
homecoming - america :dolby
fragile - yes :dts
goucho - steely dan :dolby

and dark side of the moon on sacd

there`s a huge advantage(in terms of sound) on dvd audio over sacd. this is mainly because of the fact that its digital out from the oppo to the 990 for dvds. sacd needs the oppo to do the D to A, then the 990 to do A to D to process the information....then A to D to send to the amps. I find the oppo`s D to A to be far inferior to the 990s.

after listening to 24/96 its pretty lacklustre when returning to cds. lets hope we see/hear some titles on hdvd or blue ray.
I read everywhere that dvd-a are finished...but the release of the genesis box set on dvd-v makes me happy to know that the same level of audio is available.
sorry for the ranting.