High resolution audio provides audio and music with clarity previously unrivaled by CD's. This clarity enriches the entire listener's experiance, completly engulfing them into the magic of the moment. High resolution audio formats provide far better sound reproduction than music played back from a CD.

DVD-Audio format, the much higher capacity DVD format enables the inclusion of either considerably more music (with respect to total running time and quantity of songs) or far higher audio quality (reflected by higher linear is a format for delivering high-fidelity audio content on a DVD. It offers many channels (from mono to 5.1 surround sound) at various sampling frequencies and sample rates. Compared to the CD sampling rates and higher vertical bit-rates, and/or additional channels for spatial sound reproduction).

Audio on a disc can be 16, 20 or 24 bit, with sampling rates of 44.1, 48, 88.2, 96, 176.4 or 192 kHz. (The highest sampling rates of 176.4 and 192 kHz are limited to two channels.) Different sampling sizes and frequencies can be used on a single disc. Audio is stored on the disc in LPCM format (uncompressed or losslessly compressed with Meridian Lossless Packing). The DVD-Audio player may downmix surround sound to two-channel stereo if the listener does not have a surround sound setup. The downmix capability is limited to two-channel stereo, not to other configurations, such as 4.1. DVD-Audio may also feature menus, text subtitles, still images and slideshows. Inclusion of DVD-Video also is possible. Such discs commonly contain Dolby Digital or DTS versions of the audio (with lossy compression, usually downsampled to lower sampling sizes and frequencies) in the DVD-Video section. This is done to ensure compatibility with DVD-Video players.

Super Audio CD (SACD) is a read-only optical audio disc aimed at providing higher fidelity digital audio reproduction than the compact disc. Introduced in 1999, it was developed by Sony and Philips, the same companies that created the CD.

SACD uses a very different technology from CD and DVD-Audio to encode its audio data, a 1-bit delta-sigma modulation process known as Direct Stream Digital at the very high sampling rate of 2.8224 megahertz.

SACDs may contain a 2-channel stereo mix, a surround mix (usually the 5.1 layout), or both. To be precise, the so-called surround mix does not have to be in the 5.1 format. The old quadraphonic 4.0 format will do as well, most noticeably on the 2001 SACD release of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. The correct designation for the surround part of a SACD is "multi-channel", and usually has its own "Multi-Ch" logo on the back cover.

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