You need a native player for this, but it is doable. Mpv at least can play the files.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the player would need exclusive access to the device, and bypass almost all of the audio processing stack, like software mixing. Can you play PCM audio (like system alerts) through the same DAC at the same time? Like, a hw analog mixer?
But, with Pipewire you _can_ play DSD audio, here's how:
https://wiki.libre.moe/linux/pipewire/dsd-playback
And yes, you need a DAC that supports it. They are not that hard to find though.
Edit: just noting I do not have hardware that can play DSD audio. The audio files started to be available, and there are shops that sell them such as High Definition Tape Transfers. Space is cheap, and if I would have them in my collection it would be great to play them with the best quality. Although, I probably don't hear the difference even with these Hifiman headphones, but it's the nerd in me that likes to see this to work.
The person playing them was not in the test, we randomized 20 second samples of different styles, randomized order determined in advance.
I don’t remember exact results but it was completely inline with binomial probability.
To this day I feel like there’s something wrong with high frequencies like open hats in 320 mp3, but on that day I could not tell a difference so I’m accepting it as negative placebo.
I'd recommend implementing the squeezebox protocol if you were to go this route. There's already a ton of clients and it also handles multi-room audio.
Here's the music assistant implementation for reference: https://github.com/music-assistant/server/tree/stable/music_...