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[LennyM]

I have a few old Classics Records DAD Audio Disks that I would like to convert to 96/24 PCM audio files.  Can I do that easily in MC?

If so, how please?  It doesn't seem obvious.

[RD James]

As far as I can tell, these "Digital Audio Discs" are actually DVD Video discs that contain high-res PCM audio tracks.
This was an alternative to DVD Audio discs, which are a separate format that uses MLP encoding.
 
If these are just DVDs, this is my process for ripping them (or Blu-rays) to separate audio tracks.

1. Rip the disc using MakeMKV. This creates a single .MKV file containing the tracks that you select.
It can optionally encode PCM audio to FLAC if you select the "FLAC" profile.


2. Use MKVToolNix GUI to strip out the video track, and create separate MKA audio tracks from the MKV file.

To do this, drag the MKV file to the "source files" list, and only select the audio track that you want in the MKA files.


On the output tab, set MKVToolNix GUI to split the file based on all chapters.

 
Hit "start multiplexing" to run this, and you will get tracks named: "Album-001.mka" etc.
You can import these to your Media Center library and it will play them directly.
If you want another audio format such as FLAC, you can use Media Center to convert from MKA to FLAC.
 
This method works for all DVD audio tracks, if you want to rip the 5.1 DTS track losslessly for example (note: do not convert formats such as DTS or AC3 to FLAC).

[dtc]

I believe that DADs can be played on a DVD player and the digital sent out over S/PDIF if the player has a S/PDIF output. If you have a sound card on your PC with S/PDIF input, you should be able to capture the 24/96 digital directly. There was no copyright protection of DADs to prevent this. Never tried it, but it might work.  You would then have to split and tag the files.

I also seem to remember that there were different formats - some were in a DVD like format, some in more of a DVD-A format. That is, some were in a video like format and some in an audio like format. You might need different tools/processes to rip the two different formats.

[LennyM]

Thanks for your responses.

So I gather it cannot be done within MC.

dtc, Of course I have played them, but I don't have such a sound card to capture.

RD James, This seems like a very complicated process.  Would it have an advantage over using "DVD Audio Extractor"?

[dtc]

The issue is not whether you played them, but whether the DVD player has a S/PDIF output and whether the player send the DAD digital signal to the S/PDIF output. 

I would give Audio Extractor a try. Nothing to loose.  It depends on what format the disk is in. I read about one person who used a tool to read one DAD disk, but it would not read another DAD. Depends on the format, which was not well documented. I think Classic and Chesky were the only ones who used it - just as DVD-A and SACD were hitting the market.

[LennyM]

DVD Audio Extractor seemed to work.  My DAC tells me it is playing a 96kHz file, but it does not report the files' depth.  Sounds very good though.

[dtc]

DVD Audio Extractor seemed to work.  My DAC tells me it is playing a 96kHz file, but it does not report the files' depth.  Sounds very good though.

Good news. You can check the bit depth tag in MC or check in Audio Path when playing the file.