Or, to summarize:
The problem seems to be that when the Rossini gets a PCM datastream it needs to decide whether it is DoP and if so, change from PCM to DSD mode.
As I mentioned before, the unit should be able to do this within 180 µsec according to the DoP standard, but for whatever reason it takes around 1/2 second for the Rossini to detect a DoP datastream and change to DSD mode.
That in itself wouldn’t be an issue, but the Rossini further seems to discard all data received before it switches to DSD mode rather than buffer the data and decode it as DSD, thus the need for the ½ second of silence preceding the track (presumably the silence is encoded as DSD DoP) to get playback to work properly.
However, there is a second issue related to the switching:
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When receiving data via USB, the Rossini assumes future data until a jump to a different track will be of the same form, so once it clicks into DSD mode it assumes all succeeding tracks are DSD, and if you jump back to the start of the same track it will stay in DSD mode and play back properly.
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When receiving data via the Network, any track change resets the Rossini DAC to PCM mode and causes it to have to switch all over again, meaning there is literally no way it can ever play a DSD album properly via the Network, it will always cut off the beginning of each and every DSD track sent as DoP regardless of whether you have jumped to a new track or are playing a sequence of them.
I don’t have an SACD transport, so I don’t know if SACD sent via dual AES/EBU somehow avoids this format switch delay or if the same cut off of the beginning of the first (or successive) tracks occurs there.
So the question is, now that I have this nailed down, can dCS fix it or is it due to architectural quirks of the Rossini as opposed to the Vivaldi (or Bartok)?