Should this be in the analogue section? The digital section? Both? Oh hell - I'll put it here and see what happens....

About 6 months ago I got a soundcard for my PC that, amongst a load of other things, has the ability to record at 96/24 into wav format.

All well and good - but at these levels recordings get real big, real quick!!

Having also got a DVD recorder on the PC I had dreams of creating 96/24 DVD's that would play in my humble DVD player (that happens to support it directly - not downsampling to 48/16 - according to the manual anyway).

Sadly there was no way to make this happen short of spending $5000 on professional software. That is until yesterday.

Yesterday I found a site (http://www.eximius.nl/) that just happens to offer software to do exactly what I want for the princely sum of $50. Not only that but they let you try before you buy - with a limited functionality version of the software that limits you to 2 albums and 4 songs per album.

Anyway I tried it out on a DVD+RW (which my DVD player reads) and it worked a charm. In comparison to both the CD I also cut (and the original CD) it sounds a lot better to my ears. Most amazingly to me - it is almost indistinguishable from the vinyl record I used at the source. (Put this into perspective here a minute. My vinyl rig cost me something in the order of $2,500 all told - the DVD player $70 (admittedly it now sells for $120 but lets not argue minutia). The vinyl rig is directly connected to the pre-amp via some rather expensive interconnects - the DVD player via relatively cheapo interconnects going through a Radioshack port expander into the pre-amp. In other words everything is loaded up against the DVD player - and yet it matched the sound well enough that I am sure I would never be able to pick out which was playing in a DBT.

And just to load things further against the DVD I am not using an audiophile capture card to create the WAV files. I am using a USB connected Soundblaster Audigy 2 and their accompanying software!!

Despite all this in short, I can, theoretically, now:

1. Record SACD/DVDa and vinyl at the high resolution direct (via 2 channel analgoue outputs only) to my hard disk in DVD-video acceptable format and from there use my existing DVD creation software to make DVD's I can play at home. I havent yet played with SACD and DVDa recordings (no player - I need to find one) but I imagne the result will again be almost identical. Each disk fits around 2 hours of music at 96/24 so I should be able to squeeze 2 albums onto a single disk, maybe 3 vinyl records.

2. Upsample CD's from 44.1/16 to 96/24. Like having an external upsampling DAC without the cost. Again should get 2 or 3 disks onto one DVD.

3. Use MP1 or 2 (standard DVD soundtrack format) to record CD's where the quality is not really the issue. At reasonable quality (192 kb/s) that means around 45 hours of music on a single disk. (Must check the menuing options - not played with that yet and it is going to be important with so much music on there).

All in all - quite a find for, say $120 invested in a soundcard and $70 in software (50 for the softare mentioned and $20 for the software to create the actual DVD).

Would recommend anyone with the equipment to have a play. Cant hurt and the results in my case have been astonishing!!!