DVD-A Question

If you want your questions answered by someone in the know e-mail Mark Waldrep as he is the true authority on these issues. There is some bad info floating around and some has landed in this thread. Mark teaches Digital Media and recording as a phd. at UCLA and makes the most awesome native 24/96 DVD-a's on the planet. We shared a room at the HE 2002 in New York and played these discs on the Meridian 800,861 lossless system and it is unreal. For real answers mwaldrep@aixmediagroup.com Also check out our newswire in this months Stereophile.

Folks, please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding from a post a while back on this forum from Kevin Halvorson and from what I've seen on AA and elsewhere since then is that DVD-A discs (NOT DVD-V discs, i.e. DADs) are encrypted so that the high rez signal cannot be output through a digital output. Some players may be able to output a 24/96 signal (my Marantz DV-18 for example), and I can listen to a Classic Records DAD in 24/96 sound through my DAC, but I could not take a DVD-A player, play a DVD-A disc, output it via a digital out to my 24/96 capable DAC and listen to music with 24/96 resolution playback, because the disc itself won't allow that. If that's incorrect, I might be willing to buy in to that format as well as SACD, but I don't think it is incorrect.

High resolution data encoded under the DVD-Audio format (i.e. either MLP or linear PCM) is not allowed to be exported from the player at 96khz or 192khz unless it is sent out over a secure interface (firewire, usb, or proprietary interfaces like Meridian's) and encrypted by the player before sending. It can be downsampled to redbook and sent out over standard spdif.

High resolution data encoded under the DVD-Video format (e.g. 2 channel 96khz linear PCM) can be transmitted over spdif at 96khz if the disk is not CSS encrypted. If the disc is CSS encrypted, then the data must be downsampled to redbook before being sent out over spdif. However, if the same kind of firewire or proprietary digital interfaces are present in the system, then it can output hirez DVD-Video as well as hirez DVD-audio over those interfaces.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for the prompt and thorough repsonses. I think I'll audition a few (including several mentioned in these threads) and try it out. Thanks again-
Art

RETRACTION!!! I erroneously posted that "some players will out put DVD A 24/96". Should have read as some players will out put DAD 24/96. I apologize for any harm this may have caused.