The future of CDs

Cafe Society
1

I’m not sure if this is the right forum, but it can’t hurt.

I just bought the DVD of The Best of The Corrs, where the actual music videos of their songs are on it, rather than concert footage.

There’s a section where a few of the videos are played in Surround instead of plain vanilla Stereo. And it got me to thinking about how regular CDs I play in my DVD system always come up as PCM Stereo 2.0

Are there, can there be, or will there ever be, regular music CDs with Surround Sound tracks encoded?

Maybe it intereferes with a regular stereo system if there was, or maybe there’s not enough room on a CD to fit it all in, or something…

And will CDs and CD players slowly make way for audio DVDs? Maybe they have already, I don’t really keep up with music technology.

Anyone?

2

I am not an expert, but I don’t think CD’s can contain anymore that two channels. There are a number surround sound DVD remixes of popular albums available.
I don’t know if surround sound will ever over take the two channel method.

3

DTS CDs are 5.1 channels. 5.1 channel audio is also available in the new DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD standards, both of which require special players (some new DVD video players do it) to hear multichannel audio. SACDs have backwards compatability and will play two channel audio in a regular CD player. See this multichannel audio guide for more information.

Also interesting is that, with enough knowledge and the right software, you can make DTS CDs yourself. I’ve come across people online who take old quadraphonic records from the 70s and turn them into multichannel DTS CDs.

4

According to this cite DTS “CDs” aren’t real CDs.

Normal CDs can only have two channels, IIRC. However, I suppose they could be encoded with Dolby Pro-logic for four channels (left, center, right, and mono surround) or DPLII for 5 channels (stereo surrounds). I don’t know exactly how it works, but basically, they take a source that has several channels, squeeze it down to two channels to fit on the CD, then your reciever seperates the channels again.

Even if they weren’t encoded with DPL or DPLII, you’d probably get some interesting results if you played them with a reciever with one of those modes enabled, though they probably wouldn’t exactly be what’s intended.

5

Well, they’re not CDs in the sense that they don’t adhere to official standards and could be damaging if played without a DTS decoder, but they are CDs in the sense that they’re not DVDs or 8-track tapes.

6

I bought a surround sound system about a year ago.
I am amazed at how many folks are re-releasing CDs in 5.1 surround.
I love it.
The first one I bought was Don Henly’s End of the innocence.
This set me on a search for who else had released albums in 5.1
The only place near me that sells these DVD’s CD’s what ever they are is tower.
Seems every month there are new 5.1 audio releases.
Its starting to take a large amount of my budget.

Also I have heard that you can buy Car stereos that are DTS 5.1 surround sound.

Queen’s A night at the Opera sounds GREAT!

7

You can put whatever data you want onto physical CDs - it just won’t comply with the redbook audio format we normally associate with CD music.

8

Well. I guess I can’t ask for more definitive answers than that. Thanks!

So I guess until there’s a universally cross platform standard ebtween DVDs, CDs, and whatever else comes along, so that they can all be played in a affordable system at the highest quality anyone could desire, we’re going to have to put up with a mix of standards yet.