Okay. here's how I do it.
Caveat - I cannot at this moment do SACDs directly. I am idly looking for an SACD player than can rip. I am not looking very hard. Up to now, I've bought the SACD and then relied on the kindness of others to get me a rip.
Blu-rays, DVD-A, DVD-V are all no problem. You can even do DTS-CD if you leave the audio encoded and send an encoded stream to your receiver. Just import them into iTunes or any other media player.
Hardware:
- Mac Mini (late 2014 - the current model) https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/
- Buy as much computer as you can afford. This model has HDMI out right to your receiver for multichannel sound. You can also do TOSLINK if you want to send out a 2 channel encoded stream.
- External Blu-ray drive
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AO1XFM0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
- sadly this seems discontinued, but many other options are available. This will mount your blu-rays, DVD-As, DVD-Vs, DTS-CDs, and CDs.
- External hard drive for the music files
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TKFEE8K/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
- I went a bit overkill here. Maybe something smaller would have been fine.
- LG LCD TV as a display
- video and audio are sent out from the same HDMI cable to the receiver, which in turn can send video to the TV and audio to the speakers.
- Downside - if I turn the TV off, the receiver switches the sound off. There are workarounds for this, but I've never bothered. I did bother on a previous mac mini with no HDMI out.
Software:
- MakeMKV
https://www.makemkv.com
- Worth the license fee. I use this to backup and decrypt blu-rays so I can get multichannel FLAC files out of the disc.
- Bonus: I can make easy backups of the blu-rays, which has help me escaped some of the problems with Blu-rays failing after a few years.
- DVD Audio Extractor
http://www.dvdae.com
- Also worth the license fee. This can extract the audio from DVD-Audio, DVD-Video, and a decrypted Blu-ray backup (see above) into multichannel FLAC files. It was once limited to core DTS only (Hi jimfisheye!) but now is not.
- You can use DVD Audio Extractor to make DTS encoded 2 channel files (a DTS-CD, if you will) that your receiver will likely decode into multichannel if you do direct digital output. It has its limitations, so I stick to multichannel flac instead.
- Nightingale to play the files.
https://getnightingale.com
- The software audio player matters a great deal. Some will only send 2-channel sound to your receiver. On my system iTunes and Cog seem stuck in 2-channel, regardless of the source. This one will send multichannel sound. It's based on the ashes of Songbird. It works, but it is not under heavy development.
Prior to 2017 I was using DVD Audio Extractor to make DTS encoded Apple Lossless files played through iTunes. This also worked. I cannot convince myself that I can hear the difference, but my system is 1. not that expensive and 2. my hearing is very average for a middle aged man.