Blu-Ray Audio capability

[HalfLoaf]

Hi, new here and have never ventured in the world of Blu-Ray before. I'm hoping this is the right sub-forum to post my query.

I want to invest in a blu-ray drive for my PC, purely to play / rip to FLAC blu-ray audio discs, mostly imported from Japan. I have a hate-hate relationship with streaming music or buying hard to find music on the likes of Apple Music / Amazon music as the quality is just abysmal. So I want to invest and buy a blu-ray drive and then purchase the discs from CDJapan, or the individual game stores (Eg. Square Enix).

So I've read loads about drive compatibility with video playback but I can't find much about blu-ray audio disc playback, or whether Windows / Linux can even read the discs. I believe most of the discs are encoded with Linear PCM audio.

Playback / output from the PC will be via a Sound Blaster SBX card to a NAD receiver -> Stereo output. I'm not into 5.1/7.1 for audio, I'm very happy with quality stereo!

Any insights / advice?

Thank you in advance.

Jacques

[Billycar11]

Yes you can play/rip bluray audio discs no problem probably should not be in the UHD section but whatever
Any modern bluray drive will do don't need a UHD one

[HalfLoaf]

Thank you very much!

[HalfLoaf]

Sorry to necro post. I have some audio discs, but no drive.

I can either go for an internal SATA (in my PC) or external drive (for sharing between my PC and Mac), and was considering either a

LG WH14NS40
LG BU40N (in an enclosure, SATA only?)
LG BP55EB40 (as a complete package external)

If I can get the drive to play region free DVDs that would be great as my old Matsushita in my Macbook Pro is starting to struggle a bit from age.

Any pros/cons? Any suggested software for ripping to FLAC? (MakeMKV?)

My budget is about £70, and all of the above can be had for around that if you shop around a bit.

Thank you.

[HalfLoaf]

I ended up going for the cheaper LG WH14NS40, no point spending more if I’m only doing BD music discs. I’ve never owned a BD film I can’t see me starting now.