Exactly why I don’t bother with the streamer. I wish I had just purchased the BDA-3 instead and saved the couple hundred dollars. On the other hand, a couple hundred dollars is no big deal for the added flexibility of the device and it does work well. Probably a perk for the guy who buys it used for me… lol…
I purchased it new, so I’m not in a mood to tinker in case it all goes pear shaped. All kind of beside the point anyway as the intent was to build a Rock/NUC in a fanless case to be placed in my audio rack where I could move Roon core to and also act as it’s own endpoint. There is some anecdotal evidence that doing this does allow native DSD, but I’ve only seen one thread that mentioned it before the topic moved in a different direction.
We are all refering to the Linux kernel. Rock runs a form of Linux and thus relies on the Linux kernel as do all Linux based systems. Raspberry Pi included. For DSD to work on any Linux based system it requires the driver to have been released to the Linux kernel. This gets updated it’s not fixed but not all systems run on the same kernel some are on older versions. Roons is generally pretty up to date.
ROCK like Ropieee is a HiFi product and as such has its Kernel independently patched for a lot of devices not yet included in mainstream releases. Harry does a lot of work in that respect, together with DAC owners. You will find Ropieee and ROCK tend to be well ahead of the curve.
One of the best – at an affordable $3,000, is the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge streaming DAC/network server.
I went a different way and choose to use Auralic G1 & G2 products across my listening - the one in my home office, the Altair G1 has streamer, upsampling and DAC all in one – I connect this via balanced audio cables to my pre-amp or plug in headphones. You can but these used and new for less than $2,000. I’m listening to an album I downloaded from HDTracks in DSD128 on the Aurelic Altair G1 and it is wonderful.
hoping this helps and doesn’t come too late:
the answer to your question is: YES!
I have a NUC running ROCK connected via USB to a Bryston BDA-3 and I can play DSD natively. You just need to set Device Setup -> DSD to Native, lock volume to max and you’re set to go. And it sounds great. All the leds light up yellow according to the DSD
It took me a while to realise that DSD doesn’t allow for volume control: if you try by setting Volume to Device Volume, and volume is adjusted to anything less than 100, you get white noise (be careful, it could blast your speakers). I also opened a thread here on the subject
No doubt someone will find that information helpful. I’ve moved on from the Bryston for a variety of reasons, none of which were related to its sound quality, which is very good.