i am the soundczar at musicgiants and i create the WMAL files you have been writing about. We have a proprietary hardware system that allows us to do bit for bit transfers of DVD-A recordings and turn them into WMAL recordings. We have tested this by taking the WMAL file and reversing it back to a PCM file and it matches bit 4 bit to the original. If a DVD-A disks is 6 channels of 96/24 we create a WMAL file that is 96/24
For SACD, we get stream the DSD bits using proprietary gear built for us by a division of Sony into DCS format converters which transfer it to PCM. These files sound extremely close to the SACD disks, even though we all know that there is a big difference between PCM and DSD. Various engineers from the record companies have done comparisons of our files to their masters and all are pleased. Ån SACD disk becomes a 88.2/24 bit WMAL file.
The WMAL encoder we use was customized for our process by MSFT.
fyi,..
SACD machines only will output stereo PCM from thier spdif ports
DVD-A machines only output 48/24 from their spdif ports
We do this in my studio. The direct cost of the equipment we use for this process is over $100,000.
I hope this helps and am happy to answer any questions
Elliot