The first vehicle to offer DVD-Audio was the 2004 Acura TL, via a branded sound system called ELS Surround that Grammy-winning record producer Elliot Scheiner had a hand in developing and tuning. But by that point, DVD-Audio, introduced five years earlier in 1999, was already an orphan software format, due to record company and consumer apathy and the quantity-over-quality craze that kicked in with the start of the MP3 era.
While DVD-Audio never thrived in the car, it has survived and is still offered in a handful of high-end vehicles. And it was one of the high points of my experience driving the 2010 Acura ZDX with the Advance Package.
The two-channel CD stereo sound of the ELS Surround Premium Audio System in the ZDX is stellar (a similar system in a 2009 Acura TL won our High-End Stock Stereo Sound-Off), but to experience the ultimate in automotive audio you have to slip in a high-resolution DVD-Audio disc. Or maybe a half dozen or so.
That's what an audiophile buddy and I did one day. Danny is a musician, producer and has his own home studio, and he's inspired a local and informal group to get together on a regular basis to listen to vinyl records, DVD-Audio and SACD. He showed up with a DVD-Audio version of King Crimson's In the Court of King Crimson in hand, and a dubious attitude about car audio. But it only took a few seconds of track two, "I Talk to the Wind," for him to give the ZDX system an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Then I played two of my favorite DVD-Audio test discs. Ry Cooder's sublime slide guitar in "Lipstick Sunset" from John Hiatt's classic Bring the Family panned appropriately across the dash, while "Drive," the densely layered opening track of R.E.M's Automatic for the People (mixed for 5.1 by ELS) swelled like a surround symphony.
It was when we played the DVD-Audio demonstration disc that came with the ZDX that we were really blown away. We skipped through most of the tracks, sampling a few seconds to a maybe minute of each one. But when we got to Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" we sat transfixed.
The signature guitar line snaked through the mix ("Who knew that Steve Miller could be so funky," Danny commented), the organ swooped around avian-style and the bass from the system's 8-inch subwoofer was tight and solid. But it was the detailed, powerful drum sound that left us dumbstruck.
As many times we've heard the song (too many times, speaking for myself), we'd never listened to it the way we did in the ZDX on DVD-Audio that day. And that's why -- despite what some snobby audiophiles may have you believe -- the car is one of the best places to experience music. And rumors of DVD-Audio's death have been greatly exaggerated.
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