No reason to if you are using windows 10/linux. Perhaps if using win7/mac?
Actually, I fount the opposite. DO NOT PURCHASE THIS DAC IF YOU ARE USING LINUX (and want 'bit perfect playback')!
The firmware of the dac only allows for 32 bit playback without the driver. I confirmed this by running MPD in bit perfect mode, addressing the hardware directly (Pulseaudio is not installed), and running the following command while playing music to see what was actually going to the DAC:
cat /proc/asound/card*/pcm*p/sub*/hw_params
If you are running one device (the dac) exclusively while playing music through it, all other devices should be closed, so you should see something similar to the following (after some lines saying "closed", or before depending on the card number ALSA gave to your DAC, which in my case was card 3, the last card):
access: RW_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 96000 (96000/1)
period_size: 12000
buffer_size: 48000
As you can see, when playing a 96000/24 bit track, the correct sample rate is used by the DAC, however the DAC will not allow anything other than 32 bit to be passed to it. This is identified under the section "format:", which is always set to S32_LE, aka 32 bit, no matter what your ALSA settings or MPD settings are. This will also be the case when not running the dac exclusively.
You can replicate this in Windows, at least I was able to. In the device settings for it, without the driver the only option is 32 bit at a variety of sample rates. Installing the driver solved this issue. Even more annoying, in Windows Tidal would not recognize the dac for use in exclusive mode without the drivers. But at least the problem is fixable with Windows drivers, something not possible in Linux.
I know that increasing the bit depth shouldn't be an audible problem, but it still irks me that the device states it is Linux compatible despite not being fully so.
Would be really awesome if SMSL provided a firmware update to fix this issue on Linux (and Windows, and probably MacOS too!)
@SMSL-Mandy