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.