Have you heard Rumors of a perfect marriage between emulsion and chemistry producing the ideal silver image. Me too. The first time was in 1960.

It has been the goal of mothers of invention for a century. Taint gonna happen; that doesn’t mean you will reset your goals.
D-76 as D-76 becomes very old; 100+ rolls in a 5 gallon tank you might see bromide buildup and so therefore the slow down of the film. This is the result of metol ‘dropping’ –The chicken bones method was to replenish aged D76 with D-23.

Research Shows (its age): The research published was done prior to 1980, other than in patents, so the relevance to modern emulsions is limited, since it’s the contents of the emulsion that are aging the processing chemicals. The only company that could survive the dead ends of basic research is Fujifilm, and they have no reason, no motivation, to research the process in chemistry of black and white. Actually, not even for color– their riding on a profitable horse that is on its last legs.

patents in this century are the only source of research results and they are few– The age of research is over, for analog.

The final coaters of film Kodak Ilford foma, have to float on past research. So do you. Hearsay for a possible solution to your imaging.

My suggestion is to find a better imagination method, but that won’t satisfy your need to ride the Analog Bounce.

Extending the suggestion: DK-50 served me in my first years and jobs. It is also the developer I’ve used to teach the Baker’s Dozen of printers who have experienced the differences between PRE and POST masking. On the realway condition that you are part of the Film revival, you are using 35mm ASA
black-and-white film that you shoot and scan, then rodinal will meet your needs to produce a negative to digitize.
The simplest path to a silver negative is shoot at box speed using the box developer; in other words read the instructions of the emulsion maker; see what they designed the system to do. Fomapan is frequently maligned as carrying an “inflated” speed rating. Their 200 speed film “should be” 100, according to the kin of the internet. These people don’t need directions; they have opinions. Please, read this datasheet.

note the speed difference between D-76 and Microphen. Microphen giving much more speed to this film.