A Standards Battles in Digital Audio Formats1982:Sony and Phillips jointly developed the CD that replaced the vinyl LP and split the royaltiesLate 1990s: CD market was saturated, looking for new audio format for continued growth of the market and prevent music piracy1996: record companies and electronics companies joined together to form the DVD Audio Consortium to create a new high-fidelity audio format.1999: Sony and Philips unveiled their own high-fidelity audio format, Super Audio CD, setting the stage for a standards battle similar to the VHS versus Beta battle in video recorders.Fearing a format war that would select one standard as dominant (and one as failed), many manufacturers decided to bear the extra cost of producing “Universal players” that would support both formats.Neither format has been extremely successful, and popularity of MP3 format may further dampen demand.