If it downsamples LPCM, that's news to me. does it??
It does not.
LPCM is ripped as is (to wav or flac). The advantage is indeed that it can be pre-tagged.
For DTS *decoding* (i.e., if you use DVDAE to convert to wav) , only the core (48/24) is decoded. This is not 'downsampling' of DTS 96/24 or DTS-MA, as has already been explained to himey. There is no resampling involved, it is simply decoding *part* of the DTS file. All DTS files have this capability so that they can be backwards-compatible with older DTS decoders. But DTS 96/24 (and DTS-HD) *can* be ripped completely by DVDA using the 'Direct Demux' option, which creates .dts files that include core DTS + extensions . (However, DVDAE currently has a bug which prevents it from creating correct DTS-MA files , except for the first file on a disc. So for now it really only works well for DTS 96/24). With Direct Demux of DTS you are transferring the raw undecoded DTS file to your drive, rather than a decoded file. To play it you will need a downstream DTS decoder (one that can decode 96/24 or DTS-MA, otherwise, again, you will only get the 'core', as DTS designed it to work) in your software or AVR.