I mean no personal animosity and I'm also happy to have any manufacturer posting here to discuss our needs and concerns- that's great! It's just that this thread seems to play loose muddling factual information with opinions, and muddies the line between product marketing and enthusiastic independant end users. I'm just raising caution flags for others who might be less discerning and questioning of the claims stated here.
I don't want to get into technical arguments on this, especially about opinion claims that can't be otherwise confirmed by objective testing or industry standard use, but suffice it to say that there are numerous experts who would argue against your claims of superiority of DSD for a number of reasons, inclulding the claim that it is superior for archival use. The issues are not as simple as you make it out to be. A big one is doing any editing to the files. As far as I am aware, all editing outside of simple summing and fades (and even that on most sytems that can handle DSD processing) must be done in PCM format. If DSD must be converted to PCM to do anything to the content, including simply playing it in many pieces of hardware, where's the advantage? If counting how many more angels fit on the head of the pin with future high res file conversion, there is essentially no difference in storing very high resolution PCM or very high resolution DSD. There are various technical arguments to be made for the superiority of either over the other, but those have mimimal practical implications. The practical issues are much more important and seem to me a difficult hurdle for DSD, starting with the issues at the very begining of the signal chain chain hi and lo mentioned, but also at almost every other step: storage, editing, playback, compatibility, etc.
A couple of the factual errors- I was not aware this recorder had a digital input? If it doesn't calling it a bit bucket is a misnomer. DSD files do not have the ability to store more information than PCM files, both are ulimately limited by the data-rates of the files. Higher bit depths do not sound 'more analog', if they did that would be an argument against one bit delta-sigma DSD encoding. In PCM encoding, higher bit depth provides a format in which a larger range of possible signal levels can be stored. It does not increase the resolution of information within the range covered by a lower bit depth. I won't begin to get into the claims about sounding closer to analog or audio quality, especially if the basics of digital audio are misunderstood. The mathmatics behind sampling theorem are 100 years old, proven and beyond argument. There are engineering tradeoffs made in it's application, but the mathmatics are beyond dispute.
These are good recorders that work well for many users here and help them to make great recordings. That's the most important thing and I don't mean to detract from that, but they'll do that just as well without the hyperbole.
Thanks for opening the dialog and bringing Korg onboard!