David Ranada

"So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye." So goes the song. But only some of those sentiments apply to four digital-audio formats that have gone, or are about to depart, from the consumer-electronics scene. DAT, DCC, MD, and SACD never did fare "well" in the marketplace.

Confused about which audio codec to use to encode music for your portable player? Drowning in the alphanumeric soup of AAC (iTunes/iPod), MP3, and WMA (Windows Media Audio)? Want to guarantee that you'll get the best possible sound out of your hard-disk collection of ripped CDs?

05/02/2006 On April 21, our local National Public Radio outlet, WNYC, broadcast (and streamed over the Internet) an episode of the station's Radio Lab program. This slickly produced series combines aspects of NPR-style radio journalism with modern audio-studio production techniques that are the sonic equivalents of MTV-type visual effects.

Apparently, Dolby isn't satisfied with getting its 7.1-channel Dolby Digital Plus and 8-channel lossless TrueHD technologies into the HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc systems (as requirements in the former, as options in the latter). At the Consumer Electronics Show, Dolby's Audistry subsidiary was demonstrating some new technology intended for the other end of the sound-reproduction scale.