I saw that the new Fiona Apple cd (Extraordinary Machine) is dual disc and the entire album will be available in LPCM stereo on the DVD side?

What is this format?

Just wanted to know if it's worth getting the dual disc for this or if I should just stick with the regular disc.l

LPCM stands for Linear Pulse Code Modulation, it's practically the same as PCM on regular CDs (it's lossless of course). LPCM on DVD supports up to 96KHz/24bits AFAIK. You'll probably get 48KHz/16bits on the DVD side (and 44KHz/16bits on the CD side).

So, basically just another way for record labels to get more money from your pockets by pushing a medium that is minimally superior to the norm?

Not really. Some dual disc albums have nice value added content on the DVD side, like extra tracks, music videos, documentaries and the like. It's nice and convenient to be able to use the CD side in your car (or rip it for your MP3 player) and the DVD side, with extra content, in your DVD player.

nah, we're not talking about SACD here

i wouldn't think 48/16 would be on the dualdisc, unless there's some nice video to go with it, because as you say it wouldn't be much use compared to the audio CD side.

48/24 would be very nice though. so long as the disc isn't mastered so loud you can't even ABX 8-bits from 24 (RHCP - californication is like that. i couldn't ABX parallel universe 8-bit from 16 bits, except in the first 10 sec before it hits fullscale)

I have the Judas Priest - Angel of Retribution dualdisc, the CD side is copy-protected so I can't rip it but I can easily copy the LPCM audio off the DVD side, it's crazy.
If there is a 2 disc CD+DVD bundle of the album, I'd suggest getting that though because apparently dualdiscs can't hold as much on the DVD layer than a normal DVD, on my AOR dualdisc the documentary they include is 10 mins shorter than the 2 disc version

having a shorter documentary would require a re-edit wouldn't it? or does it stop dead 10 mins before the end?

a 2-sided disc could have CD on 1 side and Dual-layered DVD on the other quite easily i think. at the very least it could have a single-layer DVD5 on 1 side.

though i'm impressed that they'd make these discs, as the replication cost would be only marginally smaller than a 2-disc set (weird disc types require custom replication, they can't just be stamped in a factory somewhere like a DVD5 or a not-very-full DVD9)

It's interviews mixed in with a concert, in the 2 disc version they have the full songs but in my one they cut off the start and end of the songs with the interviews, so it is a re-edit. Kinda pointless really, they could've left off the LPCM stuff since it's still only 2 channel and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and the CD side.