The sound completely the same. Dop does not mean converting to pcm it piggy backs dsd over pcm packets which are then unpacked on the DAC side. So it is just the means of transport the data is the same.
They should sound the same. But the reality is that how they should or shouldn’t sound is not the point. We think it should be working DSD direct and it isn’t so it is not unreasonable to explore why, no matter how they might sound!
The used Linux kernel does not know that the device supports native dsd and has to be patched to be made aware of it. This requires a rebuild of the kernel as well which more or less means that the vendor has to do this.
I wrote to Playback and their response is as under:
"There is a bug in Linux and ALSA that can cause a problem with our converters. It has been fixed a few months ago and it is therefore that you use the latest kernel and ALSA version that has this bug fix incorporated. Here is the link to the bug fix:
This patch needs to be incorporated in the Linux kernel you are using."