Brian
In Southampton: Raspberry Pi 4 running PiCorePlayer, Beresford Caiman SEG, Quad 77 Int Amp and CD Player, AVI Neutron 4, Sennheiser HD25 headphones.
In Nicosia: Small Format HTPC, Beresford 7520 ,Quad 405-2, Quart 980s German Tower Loudspeakers.
Hi laughingbuddha
Please could you pop into the welcome section and introduce yourself? Thanks.
Your terminology is confusing. All DACs are digital to analogue converters so I am unsure what you mean by "I'm not convinced that there is an analogue conversion going on" nor "what you put in from the sound source being compressed digital information"?
What you put in to a DAC is a digital stream representing the original analogue signal. Whether or not the analogue signal was compressed is immaterial. The digits just represent the waveform at points in time - this is the sampling frequency.
Perhaps if you re-phrase your question a little more clearly we could help?