Sonic Solutions announced today and will be showing later this week at the Audio Engineering Society Convention (AES) in Paris that it has collaborated with Pioneer to successfully create the world’s first DVD-Audio discs with SonicStudio HD, Sonic’s next-generation professional audio workstation, and DVD Creator AV, the DVD-Audio version of Sonic’s award-winning DVD-Video production system. The Pioneer DVD-Audio disc demonstrates the advanced features of the new format – high-resolution sound, graphics, and interactivity – and is being shown at this year’s AES convention.

Pioneer will demonstrate a new generation of universal DVD players, recently released in Japan, using a DVD-Audio disc that was produced with Sonic’s authoring system. Some of the contents were encoded using Meridian Lossless Packing technology (MLP) for the highest-quality surround sound experience.

DVD-Audio, which is not to be mistaken with the currently available DVD Video format, is the new audio format that builds on the success of the hugely popular DVD-Video format. More than two years in the making, DVD-Audio is the result of close collaboration among major recording companies, consumer electronics manufacturers and technology suppliers. The format incorporates breathtakingly accurate audio reproduction by supporting sampling rates of 96kHz and 192kHz with up to 24 bits of information per sample (compared to the CD standard of 44.1kHz and 16 bits per sample).

With DVD-Audio, full-resolution audio can be presented in stereo or in any channel combination up to six-channel surround. Audio programs can be accessed interactively and presented along with visual material including menus, slides, and text. Because of the enormous bandwidths involved in high-resolution audio, DVD-Audio incorporates an innovative coding scheme developed by Meridian Audio, called Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP). With MLP it is possible to use full-resolution, 24-bit, 96kHz audio on all six channels of a surround presentation even though the overall bandwidth of the original master tracks would exceed the bandwidth available in a standard DVD disc.