Many thanks for the responses, and especially to Gigi for the link to The Absolute Sound’s article, which was very enlightening, given my somewhat underdeveloped level of technical knowledge. It sounds like this isn’t as simple a process as I’d hoped for, that is, putting a disc in the spinner and having it play back the SACD layer in unconverted DSD format. Experimenting with my system as it stands, I actually like the CD layer better (it’s a little warmer and less shrill), but it’s running through entirely different processing than the SACD layer, which relies on Cambridge Audio’s own onboard DAC chips instead of my outboard DAC. I do have the system set to read the SACD layer in stereo, so it is presumably the PCM conversion I'm hearing through the speakers.
At some point it looks like I’m going to have to learn the ins and outs of inserting my computer into the process which is something I’d hoped to avoid (old dog/new tricks issues here). Since the literature for my CA 751 BD claims to send DSD over its HDMI output, my question then becomes: what happens to this data when (if) it reaches a DSD capable DAC? Or is this just an unworkable setup, which is the impression I’m getting from the responses so far?
At some point it looks like I’m going to have to learn the ins and outs of inserting my computer into the process which is something I’d hoped to avoid (old dog/new tricks issues here). Since the literature for my CA 751 BD claims to send DSD over its HDMI output, my question then becomes: what happens to this data when (if) it reaches a DSD capable DAC? Or is this just an unworkable setup, which is the impression I’m getting from the responses so far?