MakeMKV and Stereo Audio

[leosantare]

Hello,

Is it possible to rip Blu Ray movies (regular and 4K) in makeMKV with uncompressed stereo sound? Is makeMKV even ideal for people using stereo audio?

For example, I have a stereo sound system and always will. I use a professional RME audio interface for my PC and stereo sound system. Therefore, would I be better of using a Tascam BD-MP4K player instead of using makeMKV and VLC Media Player? I ask this because the Tascam unit has stereo XLR outputs.

I will always rather have a digital collection of mkv files on my internal hard drive instead of using discs. Although,
I may do the opposite if the sound would be much better. Plus, the amount of space 4K Blu rays take up is crazy!

https://tascam.com/us/product/bd-mp4k/top

Thanks in advance.

[Woodstock]

MakeMKV generally copies the audio on the original disk as-is, although you can have it do conversions to some audio codecs as it does the copy.

The disks I ripped tonight have 2-channel LPCM audio, which is considered "uncompressed" and "lossless", but not all players like it for some reason (it's basically the same as CD audio). There are profiles for generating FLAC and AAC tracks, but the stock profiles do not have conversion TO LPCM.

For the best control over what you get, letting MakeMKV rip what is on the disk, then processing it afterward with tools like ffmpeg will let you try different output formats quickly.

[leosantare]

Well, if I am ripping Blu Rays with makeMKV with the intent to listen to them on a stereo audio system, which audio option should I choose in makeMKV?

Is this ideal without doing any further processing after makeMKV?

For example, do other people use makeMKV with a stereo audio system?

Thank you,

[Woodstock]

Generally I don't do anything special on the MakeMKV side. My TV can decode multi-channel AAC, AC3, and LPMC on its own, and playing back with VLC allows for more codecs.

The design of most codecs are that they can be decoded as stereo, with additional channels available if they decoder supports them.

You can play with the capabilities within MakeMKV by making sure you have Expert Mode enabled, and selecting either the FLAC or AAC profiles on the advanced tab that will appear. This is how the available selections change when using the "aac-stereo" profile, for example:

aacprofileselections.png (9.75 KiB) Viewed 6484 times

In this case, it can convert an DTS-HD MA into an AAC stereo track. The original DTS-HD MA track is also available to be selected.

[leosantare]

I tried that a few days ago. The HD surround option sounded much better than the ACC stereo option, on a stereo system.

You have the option of HD stereo in the screenshot. That would be superior to the ACC stereo option. I have never seen that option for all of my blu Ray's.

I wish I could use that option!

Thank you,

[leosantare]

I like the name of the title in the previous example.

[Woodstock]

In the example, the original audio is the DTS-HD MA track; the indented options are derivations from it. The --> indicates a conversion, while the "DTS Stereo" is the base lossy core.

MakeMKV defaults to extracting "lossy core" audio from lossless audio tracks, for compatibility. For TrueHD, it will pull out the AC3 core by default.

As for the title, that was handy to make the snapshot. I was going to use something with LPCM, but didn't feel like unwrapping Irregular at Magic High Visitor Arc again. Haven't had time to watch the anime yet...

[leosantare]

Here are a few screenshots with different audio options.

DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1 (This is the top/first option in one example)
TrueHD Surround 7.1 (This is the top/first option in one example)
DD Surround 5.1 (This is the top/first option in one example)
DD Stereo (This is an option in each example)

I ripped all my Blu Rays using the top/first audio option. I guess this was wrong for someone with a stereo audio system. I probably should re-rip all my Blu Rays using the DD Stereo audio option. I didn't even realize that I had a stereo option the whole time.

How does DD Stereo compare in quality with DTS-HD MA Surround 5.1, TrueHD Surround 7.1 and DD Surround 5.1? I realize one is stereo and the others are surround but is the DD stereo a reduced audio quality compared to the others?

Do ALL Blu Ray movies, (including 4K) have the DD stereo audio option?

[leosantare]

Here are the examples,

[Woodstock]

In all of those cases, your selected profile was "default", which will not offer conversions to other formats.

If you select "flac", you will get options to convert each track to FLAC, as well as saving the original. The "aac-stereo" profile will offer a conversion to AAC, as in my example above.

Dolby Digital (DD) should play directly on a stereo receiver, even a 5.1 track version. The basis is a stereo track, after all.