A Quick Guide to HD Audio Chris has put together a short guide
to the wonders of high-definition audio... By and large, DVD
used two main formats: Dolby Digital and DTS. These are what is
known as ‘lossy’ audio formats, in that they ‘discard’ the parts
of the soundtrack that the human ear theoretically can’t hear,
which greatly reduces the amount of space that the soundtracks
occupy on the disc. This was more important for DVD than Blu-
ray, because of the relatively restrictive size of the discs
(8.5GB for a dual layered disc, as opposed to 50GB for Blu-ray).
Because of the massive storage afforded by Blu-ray, not only can
it deliver superior video, but also high-definition audio. As
with DVD the two dominant formats come from Dolby and DTS, but
they differ slightly in their implementation and there are also
more variants. Let’s take a look at the available Blu-ray audio
formats, some of which are mandatory and must be supported by
Blu-ray players, and some of which are entirely optional: -
Linear PCM (Mandat