New user - how does playback software choose audio track

[Z0001]

Hi

I have been ripping some of my DVD and Blu rays and selecting the highest quality audio stream. Currently I do not have an AV amp, just a stereo amp, but I want my files to be future proofed but not to be unnecessarily large.

If I choose the HD and surround sound audio tracks will my PC be able to play back in stereo or do I need to also select the 2 channel track (I have a stereo sound card with 2 channel RCA outputs)? I'm not sure how the down-mixing gets handled. I am using J River Media Center.

Thanks!

[SamuriHL]

J River uses LAV Audio to decode the audio tracks. You'll be able to decode TrueHD and DD+ losslessly. DTS-HD MA can only decode the core unless you drop the ArcSoft dtsdecoder dll into the LAV folder. Then it can decode DTS-HD MA losslessly, as well. However, if you're rocking stereo, decoding the DTS core is probably sufficient anyway. Once you get a receiver that can decode the HD audio formats, J River can also bitstream them so you don't need to decode them.