[8] Since the DVD-Audio format is a member of the DVD family, a single disc can have multiple layers, and even two sides that contain audio and video material.

The high-resolution, Packed PCM audio encoded using MLP is only playable by DVD players containing DVD-Audio decoding capability.

DVD-Video content, which can include LPCM, Dolby or DTS material, and even video, makes the disc compatible with all DVD players.

Unofficial playback of DVD-Audio on a PC is possible through freeware audio player foobar2000 for Windows using an open source plug-in extension called DVDADecoder.

In addition, some titles that had been initially released as a standalone DVD-Audio disc (such as The Grateful Dead's American Beauty and R.E.M.

[16] CPPM, managed by the 4C Entity, was designed to prevent users from extracting audio to computers and portable media players.

DVD-Audio discs can also utilize digital watermarking technology developed by the Verance Corporation, typically embedded into the audio once every thirty seconds.

[18] The 4C Entity also developed a similar specification, Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM), which is used on Secure Digital cards.

DVD-Audio's copy protection was overcome in 2005[18] by tools which allow data to be decrypted or converted to 6 channel .WAV files without going through lossy digital-to-analog conversion.

In the digital method, the decryption is done by a commercial software player which has been patched to allow access to the unprotected audio.

On 12 February 2008 a program called DVD-Audio Explorer was released, containing the aforementioned libdvdcpxm coupled with an open-source MLP decoder.

While the Recording Industry Association of America has been successful in keeping these tools off Web sites, they are still distributed on P2P file sharing networks and newsgroups.