That's not a bad idea, but I like trying to do this stuff myself. It could well be in my head - I was off sick yesterday with a migraine (it was weirdly painless, but kept feeling sick and getting the aura thing, which was a first for me), so probably not in the best frame of mind for it. :J

It could be an amp setting I've not found yet. I'm playing the original DVD-A through a player connected to the amp via an optical cable, whereas the rip is streamed from my PC via the HDMI on the Pi. It could be a difference in the modes set up for each of those interfaces.

Even though it's lossless the ripping software gives me different sample rates to rip it at, would that not affect the quality?!

Does that even make sense for lossless?

FLAC is encoded, rather than a direct data copy and put in a different container, so samples rates do kinda make sense. But I've never played with FLAC so I don't really know.

From the second, lengthy tutorial above:
  :/

Given the option of a sample rate, what do I go for if a 'same as source' isn't available? I'm doing all this from memory, so I'll screenshot the relevant stuff tonight.

OIC. I only rip to ALAC using iTunes. It doesn't give bitrate options. But that may simply be Apple trying to keep it simple for the dumbarses. Like me.

Here's the thing. Sample rate and bits per sample all affect file size as you'd expect. I've been using the highest settings, which unsuprisingly chuck out the biggest files sizes.

 

Surely you want the settings to match the source material?

But which one?

From what I can tell the bitrate doesn't matter. It will still be lossless. The only thing that changes with a lower bitrate is the time it takes to encode.

Your sauce file isn't working. But you want to have the same sample rate at the original material. No point going higher.

Yep, the thing now is to find where I find the place that that info can be found.