Video DVDs use lossy compression (e.g. AC3) for 5.1 audio. DVD-Audio can include an audio stream with lossy compression as well, but the primary advantage of DVD-A is that the audio stream can be compressed with a lossless compression algorithm for better quality. It's possible to have 24 bit audio in stereo at 192kHz, or in 5.1 at 96kHz on a DVD-A disk.
Unfortunately, the software needed to produce proper DVD-A's is extremely expensive and doesn't usually run on Mac OS X. Three examples are
discWelder,
Sonic DVD-Audio creator, and
Dolby Media Producer (runs on Mac OS X).