I'm looking for a program that will give me information about the audio tracks on a DVD. Specifically, I'm looking for 4 types of information:

Encoding format (AC3, DTS, PCM, etc.)
Number of channels
Sample rate (44.1 kHz or 48 kHz)
Bits per sample (16-bit or 24-bit)

The encoding format and number of channels is easy to do with just about any tool, as well as sample rate. However, I have had a very difficult time finding a program that will give me the bits per sample.

Can anyone recommend a good way to get this information? The reason I'm interested is that I'm ripping audio from some concert DVDs, and I'd like to rip it at the same sample/bit rate at which it's encoded on the DVD.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

for video-dvd sample rate can be 48 or 96 kHz (there is no 44.1), the Quantization depth can be 16/20/24.

i dont see how can you rip at the wrong bitdepth? /anyway after ripping you can get the info using any decent audio player (foobar2000?) or audio editor.

Thanks for the reply, smok3. Let me clarify what I'm trying to do. I'm not ripping the digital audio bits straight to disc. Instead, I'm using a program called DVD Audio Extractor to rip each chapter to a WAV file (I'm ripping concerts, etc., so I can listen to them from my computer). The options I described above are what I'm given for the .wav files. So, I can rip to a 48-KHz 24-bit .wav, or a 44.1-KHz 16-bit .wav if I want to be strictly CD-compatible.

You're saying that all DVDs are either 48 or 96 KHz, right? That's fine; I don't have a 96KHz option, but 48 is enough for my needs. I'll just always rip it at that sample rate.

As for the bitdepth, or quantization depth as you called it, I still need a way to figure out what it is for any given disc. There's a huge file size difference between 16- and 24-bit (as I'm sure you can imagine), so I don't want to simply rip everything at 24-bit if the source material is only 16-bit.

Hopefully that clears things up, at least as far as my purpose for this. So with that said, do you know how I can determine this information?

Thanks!

I may be wrong, but AFAIK audio streams on DVDs are coded in lossy perceptual formats like AC3 or DTS, in case of such formats there's not much sense in talking about their bit-depth - they don't have one - you can rather talk about their SNR.
So, if audio stream is in (L)PCM format, any decent program should be able to tell you its bit-depth. If it's AC3 or DTS, I would either keep it in original format (many players can handle AC3 & DTS), or decode it (maybe with dithering) to 16bit WAV (which equals to ~96dB SNR and it's probably more than you need).

I recently did this for a couple of DVDs.

I used DGIndex to extract the audio tracks. One DVD had both LPCM and AC3 and the other just LPCM. Both LPCM files were 48KHz.

I then used ChapterXTractor and Chap2Cue to create a cuesheet for the audio track.

Links and slightly more info here.

NB: I backup my CDs to image+cue, so this solution just seemed more fitting for me.

yes, well i dont do that, so i dont know what software may be the best, what i was saying is, get a software that will actually just demux (and not decode) the audio part and then you will be able to figure out what kind of stream it is (even before clicking ).

anyway here are some details on the dvd specs:
http://www.pioneer.co.jp/crdl/tech/dvd/5-3-e.html
(i dont remember having a pcm video-dvd that was not 48/16 thought)

Oh, I agree. My post was in no way meant to conflict with any advice - I was just suggesting an alternative to chapter by chapter ripping.

As a benefit my process (using DGIndex) did demux the audio tracks as the first step, so I was immediately able to see what formats I had at my disposal.

FFDShow can also display this kind of information when playing DVD's: