I have installed Volumio on a mini pc with music files stored on a usb hard drive. I have a SMSL M500 dac connected to the mini pc via usb and an iFi USB Purifier 2. When playing DSD tracks, Volumio is sending PCM to the dac. I have Direct DSD set in Playback Options.
Is there anyway of getting native DSD playback?
Volumio Version: 2.861
Hardware: Gigabyte Brix GB-BACE 3160 with Celeron CPU and 8GB RAM. Volumio on 120gb SSD
DAC: SMSL M500 via usb with iFi USB Purifier 2
I would suggest trying the beta version of Volumio Buster on your mini PC.
The kernel that came with 2.861 is probably too old to support your DAC.
Thanks for your reply. How do I do a fresh install?
In the same way you did the 2.861 install… Download image, write image to USB stick, boot your mini pc from USB stick…
yes, it is an ancient 3.18 
We’re nearing a proper beta release fast now, hopefully we can start public beta testing PI, x86_i386 and x64_amd64 the next 1-2 weeks.
To be announced soon.
For your tests, 2.857 or 2.861 should be OK
Thanks for your help.
Installed the beta on a usb drive and it played dsd ok but it would not install to disk. I tried to do this twice.
Therefore, I have reinstalled the current version and I will await a later release which will handle dsd playback to my dac.
installing to disk appears to be a hit and miss, we will have a look at it again after finishing the betas.
What I do know, there is a message re. the volumio_resize_datapart sentinel, making it look like it failed.
You can ignore that, it will boot and resize anyway.
But as said, we will take care ot it.