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Audiophiles interested in experimenting with upconverting the digital data on their CDs to higher resolutions will find a recent announcement from the Netherlands of interest. Dutch company Eximius revealed last week a new product tagged "DVD+Audio Creator" for converting CDs to either upsampled PCM or compressed MP2 files.

The company notes that its DVD+Audio format should not be confused with the already launched (at least three times by my count) DVD-Audio format. Instead, DVD+Audio is said to be compliant with the DVD-Video specification and will play on all DVD players.

According to Eximius, DVD+Audio Creator can resample a CD's 44.1kHz data to either 48kHz or 96kHz, and allows the user to define the bit rate at 16-, 20-, or 24-bits. The company's Rene Bakx says, "We do not use any standard upsampler routines, but a true 100% self-engineered upsampling/enhancing method, which makes our product unique."

Bakx claims that in AB tests, listeners consistently prefer the company's upsampled sound compared with the original source CD, even on an upsampling CD player. If the user prefers quantity to quality, the software can be used to compress the CD files using either MPEG layer 1 or 2 compression with either the Musicam or AT&T psychoacoustical model (up to 45 hours MP2 at 192kbps!).

Currently compatible only with Windows OS computers, DVD+Audio Creator is the brainchild of Eximius founder Erwin van den Berg and is available in downloadable trial form via the company's website.

One of the problems with the launches of both SACD and DVD-Audio several years ago was the inability to play either format on the audio platform of choice for a growing number of music lovers: the personal computer. SACD is still desktop unfriendly, but DVD-Audio has slowly been venturing out of the audio component roost.

InterVideo announced last week that its latest WinDVD 5 software for playing DVDs on a PC also supports playback of Intel High Definition Audio (see previous) when combined with InterVideo's optional "DVD-Audio Pack" and a PC incorporating Intel's upcoming "Grantsdale" chipset.

The company says WinDVD 5 leverages the Dolby audio technologies that are included in Intel HD Audio and also supports Microsoft's Windows Media Audio (WMA) format. The Platinum version of WinDVD 5 includes individual speaker volume control, delay, equalization, and "stackable audio effects." WinDVD Platinum 5 MSRP is $69.95 and the DVD-Audio pack costs $39.95. Both require Windows 98/2000/Me/XP.