@larryi
"there is no difference in the musical detail presented in playback. Can anyone point out a specific bit of information in a particular place in a recording that cannot at all be heard with one piece of gear versus another?"
Yes, I can. The specific recording is Shostakovich Piano Concerto number 2, slow movement. Hyperion SACD with Marc-Andre Hamelin as the soloist. This is a very quiet piece of music, apparently very simple (though I suspect this is deceptive). On a highly resolving system, the piano notes seem to hang in the air. (Quad electrostatic speakers, Krell class A amplification).
When I switched from a Marantz universal player to a Reavon, I immediately knew something was wrong. The detail and the musicality just weren't there. A bit of research showed that the Reavon's Burr-Brown DACs did not support native DSD. Reavon's technical team confirmed that DSD was down-converted to CD quality both for multichannel playback, and for 2-channel playback through their more resolving 2-channel DAC. CD quality is poorest on very quiet passages.
Switch to DSD through HDMI output into my pre-processor's AKM DACs and all the musical magic qualities reappeared. There are 8 DACs each supporting 2-channel DSD natively.
So here is an example where the identical equipment (in fact the same pieces of gear) sounded very obviously different with exactly the same DSD source.
As a side note, this performance has just been released on vinyl and I look forward to comparing it to SACD. On Presto Music, the SACD is no longer listed!