Which Audio Streams Should I Rip? Options

[egglick]

Hey guys. I'm in the process of digitizing my Blu-ray and DVD collection, and I'm concerned that I may not be saving the correct audio streams. Right now I'm only running a 2.1 speaker setup on my stereo, and I'm also limited by the fact that my Xonar Essence STX can only digitally output Dolby Digital Live, Dolby Pro Logic II, and stereo PCM.

Considering my output limitations, does anyone have any suggestions about which audio streams I should be saving? I'm hesitant to downmix the acutual encoding, because I might add more speakers in the future. I'm using [removed] software which appears to have on-the-fly downmixing abilities.

So with that said, should I just save the best audio stream and then downmix via software? What sort of output method should I select with this card for the highest quality audio? Should I maybe look for a different card?

This post has been edited by db1989: Jan 6 2013, 04:53

Reason for edit: Please read #9 of the Terms of Service regarding backup of DVDs, etc.

[Dynamic]

I'd imagine you can encode more than one audio stream from the same source file. I've used Handbrake for encoding some unencrypted TV recordings with multiple audio tracks (main sound plus audio description) and believe it's possible to select stream one or two as the source and add additional streams to be encoded with different encoders / mixdown settings / bitrates / DRC into the same file. Perhaps a short test encode would help clarify, especially if you demux the audio streams you encode.

[killazys]

Demux the M2TS files and directly repack the audio into an MKV container.