5 Best Ways to Extract Audio from Blu-ray Disc on Mac

With its top high-resolution surround stereo, and lossless pure sound, Blu-ray Audio discs are irreplaceable for especially melomaniacs. Hence, it is essential to back them up as discs wear out and can be accidentally damaged or lost. Otherwise, it's also a good way to convert them into your Mac or mobile phone so that you can appreciate them more frequently. 

So, what audio format is the best if I want to rip audio from Blu-ray?

Firstly, you have to know that there are compressed formats and uncompressed formats, and in compressed formats, there are lossless formats and lossy formats.

With lossless audio format, you can get a high-quality sound and a smaller file size, though it is for sure bigger than a lossy file, but audiophiles prefer it for its incomparable quality. 
The most widely used lossless format is FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), which is an open-source format that compresses audio files to half of their original size without losing audio information. 
Another best-known lossless format is ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), developed by Apple for lossless data compression of digital music, but it works only on Apple devices.

For lossy format, some of the sound waves lose in the transmission and result in a much smaller size, and the quality may lose more when we send back and forth the files. However, the quality depends on the bit rate, with a high one, we could hardly hear the difference. 
The most predominant one is MP3 due to its compatibility with various platforms and devices.
The newer format AAC (Advanced Audio Codec) provides better compression at lower bitrates than MP3, which means you can get a smaller file with even better quality. The problem is that it can’t be played on many devices.
OGG (OGG Vorbis) is designed to offer better and more efficient digital streaming and manipulation. It’s free and has better sound quality than MP3, even Spotify uses this format.

As for the uncompressed format, it is a copy of the original without any processing. It turns out to be the highest-quality one with the biggest file size.
WAV (Waveform Audio File) is the original uncompressed format for audio on Microsoft Windows systems.

Here’s a comparison concluding the above features for a quick decision:

1. Rip audio from Blu-ray with iFunia Blu-ray Ripper

iFunia Blu-ray Ripper is a professional tool to manipulate Blu-ray discs with its advanced techniques. It can decrypt the copy protections and keep the original quality.

 iFunia Blu-ray Ripper

Most efficient extractor to get the task done!

• Capable of decoding a copy-protected Blu-ray.
• Fast ripping speed to save time.
• Keep the Hi-Fi audio quality.
• Easy-to-use interface and functions in a few clicks.
• Enable to edit and specify the preferences.
• Batch process and merge function.

Free Download macOS 10.11 or later Free Download Windows 11/10/8/7

Instructions with pictures about how to extract audio from BDs:

1. Download and launch iFunia Blu-ray Ripper.
2. Find to open the BDs in the upper menu, or just do the drag-n-drop on the page. Don’t worry about the copy security, just believe this application.
3. Once uploaded, iFunia displays the metadata of the discs. You don’t bother either to find which title is the main track like other software. You can play it and uncheck the disc you don’t want to extract.
4. Now, choose the output audio format as you want in the bottom bar Convert all tasks to, as you can see, there are a vast range of formats and devices you can rip to. By the way, if you want to set separately the format, click the format icon to choose.
5. You may have noticed the setting icon, pick it to specify the audio codec and other parameters.Hint: If you don’t know much about this part, I suggest you just leave it as default, which is normally the most used option.
6. There’s another particular function you can take advantage of, the editing, you just click the pencil icon and get a few edit options like cutting out a section, or resetting the volumes.
7. If you want to combine multiple audio, find the Merge button at the bottom right corner.
8. At last, click the Convert button at the below right corner to start the extraction and you’ll get the audio as live sound.

2. Extract Blu-ray audio with MakeMKV + DVD Audio Extractor

MakeMKV, free during beta, is a fabulous application to handle your Blu-ray discs. DVD Audio Extractor is a highly recommended DVD audio extracting & ripping tool with a 30-day free trial.

Neither of them can accomplish the task on its own if your BD is copy-protected, which is the case for most Blu-rays. You have to first use MakeMKV to decrypt and then DAE to extract the BD audio from the .mkv file. Fortunately, both are easy to use.

The problem is that you are supposed to download two software and execute all the processes manually, which is time-consuming. Besides, there aren’t as many output formats and devices as in iFunia. 

Tutorial on how to extract audio from Blu-ray on Mac:

1. First of all, get MakeMKV launched and it will automatically detect the Blu-ray. (If you have any problem activating the software, go to this post I wrote for more detail.)
2. Click Open Blu-ray disc over the BD icon, then it starts to decrypt the disc.
3. After a few minutes, you’ll find some disc files with all the titles and audio tracks listed. Choose a destination folder and click the MakeMKV button to rip the Blu-ray to .mkv files. This will take a few minutes to an hour, which depends on your file size and the speed of your computer.
4. As soon as it finishes, you’ll find the files in the output folder.
5. Then, we begin with the DVD Audio Extractor. Launch it and select Open DVD Files From File Folder. Then click the browser icon to choose the Blu-ray you ripped with MakeMKV and it’ll list the file contents.
6. Find the audio files you want to extract, you can preview them by clicking the play button and then hit Next.
7. Choose the output format, sample rate, channels, and bit rate. Then hit Next.
8. Choose an output destination and click Next again.
9. Finally, click Start and the software will start its job.

3. How to rip music from Blu-ray by FFmpeg?

FFmpeg is a free command-line utility consisting of programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. It is a useful tool that you just tell it what file to process and what kind of output you want.

With its special commands in the terminal, new users may get confused and think complicated to use this project. And you also have to first decrypt the Blu-ray discs with MakeMKV as the steps I mentioned in the second way, so go first make the .mkv files and then get back to this freeware.

Guide on extracting music from Blu-ray on Mac:

1. Download FFmpeg and launch it. When I opened it the first time, it failed, so I went to the Apple Settings to check out, I found the solution by clicking the Open Anyway in Privacy & Security.
2. It displays an overview of the configuration.
3. Open a new terminal and use the below command to extract audio from the BD file. 
   ffmpeg -i input.mkv -vn -ab 128 audio.mp3 
   -vn is used to extract audio and -ab is used to save audio as a 128Kbps MP3 file. You can change the bitrate to 256Kbps or others after -ab; and change .mp3 to .aac or others.
4. Press Enter and wait for the result.
    

4. Extract music with Blu-ray audio extractor DVDFab

DVDFab is a well-known application for the manipulation of multimedia, its ripper supports extracting the music from your Blu-ray audio disc.

The problem is that there are some doubts about its new version of 13, which is not better than the earlier version and people get problems decrypting their protected BDs.

Guide on ripping audio from BD:

1. Download this software and open it.
2. Select Ripper in the side menu.
3. Import the BD file by clicking Add source, it will list all the information of the disc.
4. Pick an output format. There are Hi-Fi Audio with better sound quality, and Audio the other formats.
5. You can specify other settings by clicking the gear icon.  
6. At last, choose a location folder and hit Start.

5. Can VLC rip Blu-ray audio?

A difficult part of ripping the audio from BD is figuring out which track to extract as Blu-rays have several tracks. The freeware VLC can handle that as it helps us get clear about which chapter to extract to multiple formats.

However, VLC Media Player gets errors sometimes and gets slow, and it is not that easy to use. In addition, it can’t decrypt copyright-protected BDs.

Let’s start on how to get the audio track from Blu-ray with VLC:

1. Download and run the freeware.
2. Click File > Open disc.
3. In the dialogue box, open the BD folder, and check Disable DVD menus, Stream output. Then click Settings.
4. In the new dialogue, edit the file name and define an output folder. In the Encapsulation Method, you are allowed to choose the output format.
5. Tap on OK to begin the rip on Mac.

Comparison Form:

Here’s a form for a quick comparison and iFunia Blu-ray ripper is recommended.

Q&A

What decides the sound quality? 

• Bitrate is the most deciding factor for audio fidelity, so don’t set it too low.
• The mastering and mix are also predominant.
• How the file is compressed as we mentioned in the audio format part.
• You cannot ignore the equipment either.

How to convert my Blu-ray disc to video formats?

If you have other video Blu-ray discs that you want to convert, you must read the post I wrote with the rip to .mp4 format and to .mkv format or to other formats.

Differences between SACD, DVD audio, and Blu-ray Audio?

Now you've decided which software to choose? Hope this post is useful and can help you know more about Blu-ray. If you find any fault or you have any advice, please contact me!