Why do audiophiles like HQ Player?

That’s one of the rare multi-bit ladder DACs, so there’s no delta-sigma modulator. You can of course still run upsampling in HQPlayer to highest input rate it supports and get the benefits of HQPlayer filters. With Schiit Bifrost Multi-Bit and upsampling to 192k in HQPlayer you can bypass all the digital filters in it.

Or if you like multi-bit ladders, you can use some NOS one like the Metrum Musette/Menuet/Pavane that can accept 352.8/384k input rates through USB and use HQPlayer’s digital filters. That would be similar approach to my DSC1, but using multi-bit R2R ladder instead of delta-sigma DAC.

Those multi-bit ladders don’t achieve the price/performance of delta-sigma DACs though. And even best ones don’t come close to best delta-sigma DACs in terms of performance.