I just bought the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The Complete Recordings. It comes in a 3 cd and 1 DVD Audio Disc package. My system is a HTPC. My pc is hooked up via optical to my Yamaha Receiver, an HTR 6080. I popped in the dvd and started up Theatertek and the dvd plays. The Digial Dolby light on my receiver comes on. So far all good. The question I have is how do I know if I'm getting DD 2.1 or DD5.1?

Well, either way, you're not getting the real deal. DVD-Audio doesn't use DD or DTS; it uses a non-lossy protocol (not sure if it's uncompressed). I don't think that there are any PC drives that play DVD-Audio.

Most (read "all") DVD-Audio have DVD-Video tracks that are DD and/or DTS. These are regular 16-bits 48hz tracks. A DVD-Audio player would be able to decode the 96/24 tracks, but then it would need to be connected either via a 6/8 channel analog output out through HDMI 1.1 or higher.

In your present case, you are getting regular DD or DTS (which are often quite good in their own way).

I kinda thought I needed a drive that played DVD Audio. Just was suprised when the dvd actually played. Right now the music is playing...loud....and boy does it sound incredibly powerful.

Thanks!

Not sure if I understand the question or not, but DVD-A uses MLP lossless compression. It's a two to one ratio, so no data is lost when it's unpacked. They can be recorded up to 24 bit, 192kz/s. I don't own any, so I have no idea what the norm is.

I was thinking most of mine were at 24-bit/96kHz, but now that I'm looking at them, several of them just say "Advanced Resolution" with no specs. Right now I don't have a way to play them, either. I gave away my Oppo since I thought I'd upgrade at some point to the one that can send SACDs in DSD. For some reason I was thinking 24-bit/192kHz were usually 2-channel recordings, though I don't own any 2-channel DVD-Audio discs.

So in my experience, they're all 5.1. Ha ha.

Advanced Resolution mean 96/24 or 192/24. There are no 5.1 192/24 DVD-a because of disk space (or disk structure, I can't remember just now).

I believe it is due to disc space 192/24 is huge! Maybe on HD-DVDA? We can always hope.