The Windows DDP Player 1.0.30 now has a warning about only allowing 44.1k playback, and will not work with other rates selected, so I guess the distortion problem at other playback sampling rates has not been solved. That means the player won’t work at all on some Dell Inspiron computers (and possibly others now) that only have 48k playback.
I still don’t understand why this only happens in the DDP Players (and why it’s SO much worse in the Steinberg player than the Hofa and Sonoris). It sounds really stupid, but could it be because Windows SRC doesn’t know what to do with the raw PCM file in the DDP, as opposed to 44.1 WAV files in iTunes and other players outputting 44.1, that play fine at any of the Windows SRC rates without distortion. It really seems like Steinberg or Hofa or Sonoris could find a solution to this, because Dell and Microsoft would say there’s nothing wrong on their end because any of their playback sample rates is fine with all the other players with 44.1 WAV files.
I don’t think I tried 48k or 96k playback on a Mac, so I don’t know if it happens there.