Correct, and it is realistically one of the things that kept DSD as a format alive. Before DoP there was no unified way of playing DSD from a PC or Mac. One of the things to consider is that dCS were a pioneer of DSD, and in the early days of DSD – before there was ‘native’ DSD storage – dCS had to design ways of storing DSD on PCM equipment (DSD 4-wire, P3D). This was utilised in, for example, Galaxy Studios for some of the seminal DSD recordings.
The difficulty that was experienced in getting any audio at all from this “native DSD over HDMI” solution illustrates exactly why you need an agreed upon standard.
Apparently, if you’re using a delta/sigma DAC that employs ESS SABRE PRO chipsets, and are listening to anything in the DSD realm from DSD 64 through DSD 256, the output isn’t actually native DSD – it’s converted via DoP.
This part of the article really doesn’t track, as there is no way to ‘convert’ anything via DoP. The dCS implementation of DoP is done within the FPGA of a product – and is effectively a shift register with some logic to detect the markers DoP. You can easily verify that DoP isn’t PCM – simply corrupt the DoP markers (by, for example reducing the volume in non-DSD aware playback software), and you will hear the raw DSD (which sounds like noisy music at -48dB). With DoP, there is no PCM conversion - the DSD bits are preserved exactly, including timing.
Personally, the notion of “native” DSD being the holy grail is a bit counter to transmitting it via an HDMI cable. It certainly wasn’t ever done like this in the studios, and the fact that (incompatible) workarounds are needed to transmit it via HDMI hardly plays into the idea of it being “native”.