Convert DVD-Audio Discs to 5.1 FLAC for the Acura RDX ELS Studio 3D

Verify the target car is a 2019 or 2020 RDX with ELS Studio 3D; the USB surround-playback path does not exist on earlier disc-based ELS systems. On a Windows PC, install three free programs: DVD-Audio Explorer (pulls audio off the disc), foobar2000 (the encoder and tag editor), and the foobar2000 Free Encoder Pack (which supplies the FLAC encoder). Install foobar2000 before the Free Encoder Pack so the pack registers against that installation.

Insert the DVD-Audio disc into the PC optical drive. Launch DVD-Audio Explorer and use the Open Folder command on the toolbar, located just under the File menu, to point the program at the disc drive. A genuine DVD-A carries an AUDIO_TS folder holding an AUDIO_TS.IFO file; select that. If an 'Encrypted stream' error appears instead of the audio, the disc is almost certainly a DTS-CD rather than a true DVD-Audio title (see the tips for how to tell them apart).

Once the disc loads, DVD-Audio Explorer lists the track groups it finds and shows channel information for each in the right-hand pane. Use that pane to distinguish the plain stereo mix from the surround mix before selecting anything.

Most DVD-A titles carry both a two-channel and a multichannel version of every track. The 5.1 group is the one whose channel layout lists Lf-Rf-Ls-Rs together with C-LFE; choose that group rather than the stereo one. Highlight the first track, hold Shift, then select the final track in the group to capture all of them. Open the Extract window with the save (floppy-disc) icon, set an Output Directory to an empty folder using the drive icon, tick Merge Groups, leave the rest at their defaults, and start extraction. This produces a set of 5.1 WAV files.

Open foobar2000, create a new playlist (File > New Playlist), then use File > Add Folder to load the WAV files just extracted. Inspect the reported sample rate. Tracks shown as 24-48000 are already correct and need no resampling; tracks shown as 24-96000 must be downsampled during conversion, because the ELS head unit will not play 96 kHz material properly.

Select every WAV track, right-click, choose Convert, then the '...' entry to open the full Converter Setup. Open the Output Format setting, pick FLAC, and press Edit: drag the Compression Level slider fully to the left for zero compression, and switch the Output bit depth field away from Auto so it reads 24-bit. That Auto default often encodes at 16-bit, which shrinks the files and can block playback, so choosing 24-bit explicitly is essential.

Back in Converter Setup, open the Destination setting and point it at the source track folder so the new FLAC files land alongside their WAV originals. Leave the remaining options at their defaults.

Skip this step if the tracks are already 24-48000. For 24-96000 material, open the Processing section, double-click Resampler (PPHS) in the Available DSPs column so it moves to the Active DSPs column, then use Configure Selected to set the Target Sampling rate to 48000. This brings the files down to the required 48 kHz.

Start the conversion. When it completes, use foobar2000 to tag each FLAC with album, title, artist, and cover art, then rename the files to their song titles. Copy the finished 24-bit/48 kHz zero-compression FLAC files onto a USB flash drive formatted FAT32 or exFAT and plug it into the RDX USB port. If a particular drive is not recognized, try a different, good-quality stick; some USB drives have been reported to fail where others work.