Regarding MC21, are you sure you dont have it set to downsample 176 files to 96? Your PWD is correctly displaying 176?
So I went into my JRiver MC21 settings as followed: tools>audio>options>dsp&output format and changed all of my output setting to
"no change" to match the input settings. Now the Spring is displaying the correct format.
I never went into this setting before, and as you mentioned above "176 was downsampling to 96" (it's the only 176 file I have) without me even knowing. Funny thing is, with the PWD showed 176 on the display window, but the Spring didn't?
Thank you for bringing this to my attention prior to going into JRiver settings, I appreciate it very much!