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At its January CES presentation, Sony announced that this is the year that SACD will roll out big time to the masses. News from EMI/Capitol and Silverline Records would suggest that DVD-Audio may not be far behind, at least as far as available software is concerned.

There are probably only a handful of recorded works which could successfully survive the transition from the original two-channel release to a 5.1 surround remix. Queen's 1975 release A Night At The Opera is certainly one of them, and, in fact, the recording was originally scheduled to hit the streets last">http://www.stereophile.com/news/11174/">last November as a 5.1 DVD-Audio disc from DTS">http://www.dtsonline.com">DTS Entertainment.

Drum roll, please: As promised, the DVD-Audio 1.0 specification has been finalized by the DVD-Audio Working Group 4 of the DVD Forum, and will shortly be presented to the Steering Committee for final approval. A multitude of delays both technical and political popped up over the last two years, stalling the evolving specification until just recently. (It was orginally intended to be released months ago.) Still to be settled, however, is how DVD-Audio 1.0 will co-exist with Sony's and Philips' promise to promote their rival technology, Super Audio CD (SACD), as an independent and competing format.

Running close on the heels of the 105th AES Convention in San Francisco, the DVD">http://www.dvdforum.org">DVD Forum held its conference two days later in the posh Hyatt Regency near the SF Airport. Attended by a variety of computer and consumer-electronics industry folk who manufacture and sell DVD discs and hardware, more than half of day one was devoted to the emerging DVD-Audio format. Although the presentations became highly technical at times, the sheer variety of possible formats and applications for DVD-Audio became apparent. Whether this is a blessing or a fatal flaw, all agreed that the consumer will ultimately determine DVD-Audio's fate in the next 2 to 5 years.

As expected, the DVD WG-4 Audio Working Group announced at CES that it has released a draft of its DVD-Audio specification to the 10 original DVD consortium companies, and to music-industry associations RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), RIAJ (Recording Industry Association of Japan), and IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry).

The trend of computers redefining the price/performance ratio for digital audio shows no signs of slowing down. A new PCI-slot soundcard has been released by Digital">http://www.digitalconnection.com">Digital Connection that could help change preconceived notions about the level of sound quality achievable from a computer. The $295 DC Pro 24/96 enables a brand-new function for the PC, playback of DTS 5.1 music CDs, as well as support for 24-bit/96kHz playback and recording, currently available only on high-end soundcards such as the CardDeluxe from Digital Audio Labs and the RME DigiPro/8.

On November 16, Technics and Panasonic presented their DVD-Audio">http://webevents.broadcast.com/dvdaudio/frames.html">DVD-Audio Q&A Forum to answer questions online about the new high-end audio format, players, and software. After introductions and an opening orientation about DVD-Audio, the first "questions" appeared, canned, as the panelists read "answers" from their notes. Still, some interesting information came to light.