I just got this from the manufacturer of the new DAC.So based on this, Apple is the devil in disguise for HiFi Audio and there is no way to play DSD on the Mac without a conversion to DoP.
DSD-over-PCM (DoP) isn't a conversion, it's a data transport method. In simple terms it packs the DSD data in a PCM steam with a DoP header, which the DAC reconfigures as DSD and "unpacks" the data and plays it back as DSD. Furthermore the end result of DSD data delivered over DoP and native DSD is exactly the same, there's literally no difference besides the data transport being packed in PCM or direct.
It's just on macOS (CoreAudio) that DoP is the only option for DSD playback as Apple will likely never add native DSD support. The "downside" to DoP is that DoP depends on the PCM sample rates the DAC supports to determine what the maximum DSD it can support. Here's a little cheat sheet of DSD via DoP and the PCM sample rates the DAC would need to support.
DSD64 via DoP requires the DAC to support a PCM sample rate of
176.4 kHzDSD128 via DoP requires the DAC to support a PCM sample rate of
352.8 kHzDSD256 via DoP requires the DAC to support a PCM sample rate of
705.6 kHzNow, all the DACs I've seen only support DSD256 over DoP, requiring native DSD support (Windows or Linux if the kernel supports the DAC) for DSD512. But if higher sample rate DSD was currently possible via DoP, here's what that would look like...
DSD512 via DoP would require the DAC to support a PCM sample rate of
1411.2 kHzDSD1024 via DoP would require the DAC to support a PCM sample rate of
2822.4 kHzRegarding Linux, native DSD being supported depends on the DAC and if the Linux kernel has support for the DAC, otherwise you may be limited to DoP there too. Keep in mind, Linux has larger learning curves than Mac does, especially if you've never used Linux before. Would actually recommend using Windows over Linux if DSD512 is actually a priority here. I'm afraid it's going to have wider support here for native DSD with a ASIO driver. ASIO is Windows only (though a DAC manufacturer created its own proprietary ASIO driver for macOS). On Linux it goes through ALSA and as mentioned native DSD support depends if the Linux kernel being used has support for the DAC, if not then for DSD512 it's likely Windows only there.