Do I need all audio track levels?

[Arp137]

Hello,

That's maybe a stupid question, but if a title has, lets say a TrueHD track, and in the level below is the DD surround stream, or in other cases there is a DTS-HD, with a DTS Core below it. Do I need both for the top one to work? So, do I need to extract TrueHD and DD in order to have TrueHD work?
This always confuses me.

Thanks.

[Woodstock]

Depends on your player. Theory says that players should handle extracting the lossy layer from the full track. Some players dispute that theory, which is why MakeMKV offers to pull them out for you.

[Arp137]

Does that mean that the layer below it is already included in the top layer and would just be an additional track?

[Woodstock]

Most "lossless" audio tracks are built upon lossy cores. Even below the "lossless" stuff, the track profiles build up from a single-track core. Additional information is included to tell the decoder what is different between the main channel and "channel X". The lossless part is the difference between the lossy core and a lossless version.

But not all decoders can deal with that. If yours can, sweet - only one version needed. If not... that happens, too.

Personally, I put multiple tracks in my stuff. It all goes through handbrake before it goes onto the media server, so I put an AC3 track, and AAC track, and then pass through whatever was the highest spec track, for someday when I have one of those fancy "plays everything" home theaters.