Here’s why audio DVDs are better than CDs

Before the advent of digital media, physical media reigned supreme. Believe it or not, CDs, DVDs and even Blu-Rays (which are still in use) contained all types of content. CD-ROMs regularly contained computer software, games, videos and music. It was also possible to “burn” CDs and store personalized content on them. Readers of a certain age will certainly remember staying up late, burning their own audio CDs like mixtapes to listen to in their car on road trips. Data CDs could hold up to 700 megabytes, including digital video and audio files, while audio CDs could store up to 80 minutes of songs. Because it represented a lot of storage space compared to anything else at the time, CDs seemed cutting edge and became a must-have.

Eventually, CDs gave way to DVDs and other formats, like HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, all of which contained significantly more media. As a result, higher resolution capabilities through higher storage capacities and improved high-quality, lossless format support have made DVD-Audio (DVD-A) discs better than CDs. Of course, this isn’t always true, but it’s a good generalization.

Thanks to this massive increase in storage over traditional CDs, the DVD-A format supports lossless audio with 5.1 channel sound. On a dual-layer DVD-9 disc, DVD-As can hold up to 8.5 GB of data and, depending on quality and resolution (higher resolutions require more data), can hold between 1.5 hours and 7.5 hours of audio. You can immediately see why this is a huge advantage over CDs that have a much lower cap. The premium audio capabilities alone make DVD-As a solid choice for audiophiles and purists who still want to inject a little retro experience into their lives.

Released in 1999, at the height of physical media’s popularity, DVD-As are exclusively for audio and differ from traditional DVDs because the latter were designed to contain both video and audio, with video being the primary focus. DVD-As, for their part, reserve all their storage space for audio formats and files. This is where lossless and high-resolution capabilities really come into play. More space, and more space for media and data, means better overall quality.

But, surprisingly – or perhaps unsurprisingly due to when the format launched – there haven’t been many official music releases on DVD-A. A search on the music discovery and collection platform Discogs reveals approximately 2,300 titles historically released in this format. For comparison, there are over 6 million CD releases on the site and Super Audio CDs (SACDs) are featured in over 17,000 releases. This is also why many DVD-As that actually exist have become increasingly rare, making them attractive collector’s items for true enthusiasts.

Today, stand-alone DVD-Audio players are a niche and hard-to-find product. Most standard DVD players do not play DVD-A discs in their high-resolution formats. However, you can use a universal Blu-Ray player with a DVD-A disc. This is an example of features or capabilities that we lose when moving to modern technologies. There are actually many other DVD-related features that we’re also losing in the streaming age, like bonus features, on-disc commentaries, and extras. For any OG disc lover, it’s also crazy to see Blu-Ray hailed as a nostalgic way to watch movies and media. Anyone who remembers DVDs and CDs, some of the original disc formats, understands that CDs were used so that Blu-Rays could work, or something like that.