I had a bunch of fun with DVD-AE over the holiday weekend. I was able to transfer the 40th Anniversary PCM version of Steven Wilsons remix of Thick as a Brick, along with the flat transfer to FLAC. In an A/B comparison I can't tell any difference between the DVD and the FLAC files.
It immediately made me want to try some other titles, so next was the ultra awesome Led Zeppelin dual DVD set (cover shows red sands). I expected 48/16 based on what DVD-AE was telling me about the titles it found on the discs. But MC20 says its playing samples at about 870. Usually I see around 1440 samples on CDs, about 1550 for 48Khz. I can't imagine what went wrong, so I suppose I have some learning to do about DVD-AE.
I am still unable to make a multi-channel surround file with DVD-AE that I can play with MC20. In looking on the forum, I've seen people say that you have to configure MC20 to output to surround. I haven't done that so far, because I also want to be able to play my stereo FLAC files as natively as I can. I wish there was a way to get MC20 to output to my DLNA HT receiver in whatever format the file is configured for. This happens naturally with DVDs and Blu-rays played on my disc player. Why doesn't MC20 do this?
I was not able to get Convert Format in MC20 to perform a conversion from a DVD.
I also tried the Bigasoft Audio Converter, but I found it totally inferior to DVD-AE. I was once again not able to get a single file off of a DVD with that software.
So thanks for the DVD-AE suggestion! I have about 100 other musical DVD titles to go through and learn from.