Extracted audio from MKV--how to convert .DTS audio file?

[mindstormer]

I used MKVToolnix to extract the audio of an MKV file. Currently, I have a .DTS audio file, but I don't know which audio format to convert it to so I can preserve the quality (I don't want any quality loss whatsoever)., I also want to be able to play audio (it's a concert and I want to trim and cut it so that I end up with a song for each file) on an Android phone.

What are the steps to accomplish this? The main thing is to preserve the quality 100% given that the music is from a concert so I am already losing some clarity.

Thanks.

[videobruger]

You could convert to FLAC or WAV with Audacity with FFMpeg plugin.

But I guess your DTS might be 5.1 and you'll have to downmix it to stereo for an Andriod phone.

[ndjamena]

Eac3to.

[mindstormer]

Will try those 2 options when I get home, thanks for the help.

I am new to converting files, so here's a basic statement that I want to know if it's true (and useful): "if a file is not compatible with a device, convert it to a lossless format that is compatible with a device is always the best option for fully preserving the quality of the file in terms of quality and size efficiency." What if the source is really bad (like a low quality mp3 file--would I still want to convert it to FLAC)?

[ndjamena]

To fully preserve the quality you MUST convert to lossless and accept the file size is going to be large. Lossy encoding is a size trade off, if you can encode it lossily and it's still acceptable to your ears then you might as well do that. I generally convert AC3 to AAC and to be honest I can't actually tell the difference. If I was making a master that was to be re-encoded to other formats then I'd always use lossless if I don't intend to keep the original.

It's all a matter of what you're willing to accept. I you need lossless for whatever reason, the original audio, FLAC, PCM or ALAC are your only options.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Eac3to/How_to_Use

-Edit-

Urgh, where are the others used?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lossless_audio_codecs

[mindstormer]

Ok, a few more newbie questions:

When I used MKVToolNix to get the .DTS audio file, no quality was lost because it is exactly like separating an MKV file into audio and video parts, right? Why is it .DTS file that I get and how do I know what format it was originally? Is converting to lossless the only way to play it on a device or can I somehow get the .DTS file back to the original source format (ex. maybe it was an AAC file that was incorporated to the MKV file--is the AAC file equivalent in terms of quality to the .DTS audio file, which can then somehow be converted back to AAC without loss of quality)?

[ndjamena]

Every time you convert from any lossy or lossless format to a lossy format, information is lost and that information cannot be recovered. A DTS file MUST have been converted from PCM, there's no other alternative. If it was originally AAC it would have been converted to PCM before being fed into the DTS encoder. PCM is the only format that can be directly fed into an encoder because it's the raw audio data, if you feed anything else into encoding software it has to be converted to PCM before it can be re-encoded.

[mindstormer]

Thank you for the quick and informative replies.