Which Audio-Track to choose on BD?

[ZeeD]

After some reading in this forum I finally want to begin to rip some Blurays, but not until I have chosen which audio tracks to prefer.

My aim is to have a flexible audio solution, so I want to stick to the "best of both worlds" setting explained in your Surround Sound Guide. According to this I am supposed to have two audio tracks per language I want to have in my final file.
The first one with AAC (CoreAudio) codec an Dolby Pro Logic II Mixdown, the second one with AC3 Passthru. For DVDs there was no problem as AC3 was the only kind of track the DVD had.

When looking at Blurays I encounter BD LPCM, DTS and AC3. BD LPCM and DTS are, as far as I understood, lossless. So which source do I want to use for which audio track?
My guess would be like this:

First Track:

• Track: BD LPCM or DTS prefered, otherwise AC3
• Codec: AAC (CoreAudio)
• Mixdown: Dolby Pro Logic II
• Saplerate: Auto
• Bitrate: 256
• Gain: 0
• DRC: Greyed out for BD LPCM and DTS, 1 for AC3 to use "DVD-Hints" (so it sounds like it is played by a standard BD-Player?)

Second Track:

• Track: AC3 prefered, otherwise BD LPCM or DTS
• Codec: AC3 Passthru, otherwise AC3 (for BD LPCM and DTS)
• Mixdown: AC3 Passthru, otherwise 6-channel discrete (for BD LPCM and DTS)
• Saplerate: Greyed out, otherwise Auto
• Bitrate: Greyed out, otherwise 640
• Gain: Greyed out, otherwise 0
• DRC: Greyed out in any case

Would this be the best solution? Sticking to the lossless source when encoding is needed and using the already encoded AC3 Track when Passthru is needed?

[Deleted User 11865]

You pretty much nailed it. Though if the BD has a TrueHD track, this should be used for the 2-channel downmix.

In order to have access to TrueHD tracks, you'll need the nightly build (see the announcement at the top of every subforum). The nightly will also let you select DTS-HD tracks, but there's no point in using it over the DTS track as the DTS-HD decoder discards the HD extensions and decodes the core anyway.

[ZeeD]

Thank you very much!

[nightstrm]

You pretty much nailed it. Though if the BD has a TrueHD track, this should be used for the 2-channel downmix.

In order to have access to TrueHD tracks, you'll need the nightly build (see the announcement at the top of every subforum). The nightly will also let you select DTS-HD tracks, but there's no point in using it over the DTS track as the DTS-HD decoder discards the HD extensions and decodes the core anyway.

If the BD LPCM track is stereo (2.0), I'd use that for the 2-channel track (typically AAC@320k). However, this often isn't the case (with the major exception being music/concert discs). Always use the AC3 track (explicit or embedded in TrueHD) for the surround track if present.