Ableza
Headphoneus Supremus
By this I mean that although these are commonly called PCM recorders, the "PCM" signal these devices output is really the result of a re-sampling and decimotion trick performed on the delta sigma modulator data stream.
Yes, it is, depending on the ADC used. But what does that matter? If that is the original content format, then there will be nothing better created from it, and any variation from that original is just that: a simple variation. Not an improvement.