Will it be possible to perform PCM-to-DSD conversion on the fly in Volumio? This has been a very popular feature of other players such as Audirvana+. It’s considered a better solution then direct PCM playback because DSD-to-Analog conversion is ALOT easier and better then PCM, so even in-flight conversion has benefits.
Here is PS Audio CEO discussing why they are doing this in all their high-end DSD players: How can converting PCM to DSD be better? - YouTube.
While Audirvana+ does a good job, the macOS/Windows environment is very heavy and “noisy” and sometimes I can hear dropouts. A dedicated player (probably x86 only due to CPU power needed) would be preferred.
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Daphile does this as well. Daphile also has a feature that will upsample according to the original sample rate. So a 44.1k file would up sample to 176.4k, and a 48k file would go to 192k. Also, DSD files should not be affected by your choice of up sample speed.
Logitech Media Server does it too. This feature is based on SOX-DSD branch. It is good idea, but as You already mentioned, it is CPU intensive and WIN/Mac doesn’t play any role on sound quality. LMS is probably good solution to use here. Basically LMS is multiroom solution, You run Your LMS server on basement or somewhere away from Your audio system and stream music from it to Your system.
Currently I don’t use NAS for my music collection, but if I do someday, I run LMS on my NAS server and use Volumio as squeezebox endpoint.
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I ran Daphile (which is LMS-based) for years and was thrilled by its functionality and extensibility, and I thought it sounded good as well. However, on a whim I booted to Volumio on my Daphile machine, same machine, files, cables amp, DAC and speaker, and Volumio sounded dramatically better. I even sent a recording to a friend of the two systems and he heard the difference as well, pointing to the same improvements in high frequencies and detail that I heard. At this point I’m putting up with Volumio’s limitations in order to get the better sound, but I’d rather have it all, thank you!