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The big hold-up with the new CD/DVD-Audio dual discs has been the physical thickness of the actual discs. In order to make the new CD compatible discs work in many older car audio CD decks, compromises have been made on the disc that are not true of individual DVD-Audio or CD discs. For example, because of the bonding process, the CD layer of the dual disc can now supposedly play only 60 minutes of content, as opposed to 74 minutes on a traditional red book CD. The DVD layer of the disc is what record industry technology geeks call a “DVD 5,” which is a single-layer DVD that is not capable of storing as much music and aftermarket goodies as a “DVD 9,” which is a dual disc DVD.

Record industry execs guess that certain content decisions will need to be made on song edits to make long albums fit on the shorter CD side of the new flip disc. Tougher decisions will have to be made on the DVD 5 side of the disc, because if a disc is authored with 5.1 channels of 24/96 MLP surround sound (the best sound you can get, which can still only be played back on a DVD-Audio player), then other goodies will need to be left off or down-converted to lower resolutions. Possible compromises include omitting a lot of video clips or photo galleries. If space is really tight, 24/96 or 24/192 stereo tracks may be eliminated completely with the CD side being the only stereo version of the album.

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