Do all 5.1 Surround DVD-A and SACD offer stereo mixes?

[j20056]

I'm sort of new to this, but do all the 5.1 surround SACD and DVD-A include stereo mixes or not always? If they do, are some of the stereo down mixes sometimes mediocre and done "quickly"? Can I safely buy any DVD-A pr SACD and rest assured that there always will be a quality stereo mix in there?

 

[ted_b]

that don't have a stereo layer, so SACD's are pretty safe (and conversely many SACD's are stereo only). However, for DVD-Audio discs there are many that do not have a dedicated stereo mix, and use an internal table of contents called SMART to downmix the 5.1 into 2 channel. Alternatively, there might be no stereo mix on the MLP (Audio_TS folder) layer, but there may be one (not downmixed) in the video layer (Video_TS folder) simply called 24/48 or 24/96 PCM. It requires switching to DVD-Video mode. Examples of dedicated surround only are Beatles Love and Natalie Merchant Tigerlily.