dual disc question

[rotel&energy]

I bought my first dual disc last night (Franz Ferdinand's new disc) and had a few questions. I hope this hasn't been brought up before.

About the DVD layer: From what I've read it comes in two flavors - Enhanced stereo sound or 5.1 surround.

First question is this "enhanced stereo sound" - what does that mean exactly?
Second question - the 5.1 surround mix - is this la DVD-A or SACD layer or more like a normal 5.1 DVD movie soundtrack that you'd get with any DVD-video disc?

[junior77blue]

Enhanced stereo - Typically at a higher sampling rate, i.e. 192KHz vs. Redbook CD @ ~44.1KHz

So, the theory is more data, better sound...

DVD-A can either be 2 channel or multi-channel. Typically in 2 channel you get higher resolution per channel than you would with multi-channel. There's only so much information that can be stored on a DVD.

Difference between standard DVD and DVD-A is sampling frequency. DVD are 96KHz while DVD-A are higher sampling rates.

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

[PewterTA]

The enhanced tracks are typcially 24/48KHz vs the Redbook Audio (CD standard) of 16/44.1KHz.

The 5.1 surround is just that, normally it's not DVD Audio, but just it presented in a DD 5.1 surround mix.

If you have a good CD player with good DACs on it, I have found in the 3 or 4 dual discs I have that I typically like the CD side better than the enhanced stereo/5.1 side as it sounds "better" to me. I just like getting them for the videos/making of the album. I really liked the Dave Matthews Band - Stand Up dual disc for the behind the scenes stuff, made it worth the few bucks more.