My new DVL 919E proudly proclaims 96kHz 24 bit DAC on the front and when looking through the manual (actually the manual for the 919, closest I could find) it mentions an 'icon' in the display window:



My question is what discs can cause this to light up? My player was manufactured in 1998, DVD-Audio and SACD didn't come out until 1999+ and the first use of DTS 96/24 that I know of was in 2002, but there must be something out there if this player was built to cope with it.

The article on laserdisc archive about the DVL-919 confuses me further by saying:



The article was written in May 1999 and seems to imply that the player can indeed play DVD-Audio discs. I do own a DVD-A disc but it goes straight to the VIDEO_TS data.

Thanks for any info.

Well, I believe som PCM encoded (not Dolby Digital or DTS) DVDs have that high sampling rate. So those DVDs can be played in that player.

I believe most DVD players have this capability, so it makes sense that a DVD/LD player would as well. I know my 2002 Skyworth DVD player has a 96khz PCM option in the menu, I guess to try to output a bitstream of a 24 bit/96khz through one of the SPDIF connect? Though not sure if any receivers up until recently supported that kind of bitstream.

There were "audio DVDs" prior to the introduction of DVD-A which used the DVD-V structure to deliver 96/24 PCM audio. I believe this is what is referred to.

I have a titanic soundtrack CD that is DTS encoded, I will look at the disc and concur

I finally got hold of a DVD-A (details here) encoded in DTS 96/24 and sure enough I got the little light. Curiosity satisfied.

The DTS Titanic CD is 20 bit @ 44.1 k sampling with an encoded DTS bitrate of 1.2mbps.

To Hippiedalek:
Chesky and a few others issued standard DVD's that were 24-bit/96khz linear PCM - these were standard DVD's made before the DVD-Audio format was finalized. Some DVD-A's have the 2 channel mix encoded on the DVD-video compatible section at high resolution and sample rate, such as Queen ANATO. Pioneer DVL and DVD players can, unlike other companies players, output the high sample rate directly via the optical or coax outputs without down sampling to 48khz as the DVD standard requires so receivers and outboard converters can bypass the Pioneers internal converters. Of course, 24-Bit resolution is fake anyway... 20-Bit is the best that can be done until superconducting converters come along. The thermal noise of resistors/capacitors is higher than a 24 bit converters noise, so assuming a 24 bit converter really had 24 bits of resolution, it would spend its time converting the noise of its lower 4bits.

Anyway, you are playing the high Rez tracks encoded on the DVD-Video section of your Queen disc. At least you got the "real" Brian May mixed version instead of the initial DTS release that was horribly mixed with incredibly heavy noise gating.

24-bit encoding is for headroom, to avoid truncation errors, step-height distortion, & so on, not for actual audio data. After all, what microphone has a 140 dB signal-to-noise ratio? (Or a frequency response flat to 40 kHz, for that matter?) With today's mixing practices, that's badly needed headroom. There's no real justification for taking it all the way to the consumer delivery format, but modern semiconductor design practices make it easier to work in multiples of 8 bits, so 20-bit audio is often delivered in 24-bit streams with the LSBs set to 0 — & at that point, you're better off just dumping the 24-bit output of your mixing system.

I have the same pressing myself its brilliant in 6channel discrete. over the standard stereo CD that I also have. That dts CD I think it cost £30.00 got it when dts.com was doing a bonanza sale around early 2000.

I have switching on the AVR that can tell me what the signal is something called "Straight" that allows me to flip though to tell me its PCM / fs:48kHz which is present on DVD-RW I'm playing.