That's for playing with MPC-HC, but for extraction with eac3to the previous posts still apply.
I don't know what your "step 1" does though. "step 2" doesn't make the file not downsample, it's just for setting the output format to 7.1. If you don't do that, then you have to set it manually every time you open MPC-HC, and that was the main reason we didn't use the Arcsoft decoder for DTS-HD MA for a long time, even though it worked technically, before someone figured that out. You also need a special checkactivate.dll, but as you said nevcairiel at doom9 added the functionality to LAV audio so all that is moot now, for playing in a directshow player.
That the file is downsampled or not when using the arcsoft decoder, depends on the version.
A simple test:
eac3to v3.24
command line: eac3to "E:\HDC\DTS HD DEMo Blu-ray x264.DTS.1080P-Re.MClub.mkv" HDMA-test.flac
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MKV, 1 video track, 1 audio track, 0:00:21, 30p /1.001
1: h264/AVC, English, 1080p30 /1.001
2: DTS Master Audio, 7.1 channels, 24 bits, 96kHz
(core: DTS, 5.1 channels, 24 bits, 1509kbps, 48kHz)
Track 2 is used for destination file "HDMA-test.flac".
[a02] Extracting audio track number 2...
[a02] Decoding with ArcSoft DTS Decoder...
[a02] Encoding FLAC with libFlac...
[a02] Creating file "HDMA-test.flac"...
[a02] The original audio track has a constant bit depth of 24 bits.
Video track 1 contains 529 frames.
eac3to processing took 13 seconds.
Done.
Then see info of encoded flac file:
eac3to v3.24
command line: eac3to HDMA-test.flac
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FLAC, 7.1 channels, 0:00:21, 24 bits, 7127kbps, 96kHz
And -test to check the version of ArcSoft DTS Decoder I used:
eac3to v3.24
command line: eac3to -test
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
eac3to (v3.24) is up to date
Nero Audio Decoder (Nero 7) works fine
ArcSoft DTS Decoder (1.1.0.8) works fine
Sonic Audio Decoder (3.24.0.0) doesn't seem to be installed
Haali Matroska Muxer (2011-03-03) is installed
......
Actually my TMT5 version number is 5.0.1.87.