That’s not surprising. You are using a delta-sigma DAC that has to convert PCM to a pulse code for delta-sigma (essentially DSD). That conversion is unlikely to be as good as what HQ Player can do with its greater computing resources and algorithmic refinement. In contrast, an R2R DAC like the Spring 2 discussed on the thread earlier does not have to go through that modulation stage. HQ Player can be still relevant there because upsampling PCM with the right filters can improve audible results for some source material and R2R DAC designs. OTOH, the whole point of NOS R2R is to avoid filter artifacts like ringing. The fun with something like HQ Player together with a high-end NOS R2R DAC would be to explore different filtering recipes for different source material, without interference from DAC digital modulators or filters. Another rabbit hole to fall down into 
I wonder why the output is so dirty (output of the Mojo I have is also dirty, with plenty of spurious ultrasonic tones). And the signal level in the picture is pretty low below -50 dB. It should be measured with -3 dB repeating sweep from 0 - 22.05 kHz with the DAC running at 44.1k and analyzer in “peak hold” mode.
The Hugo2 or the APx555 output is dirty?
He uses “a 0dBFS white noise as the source not a swept sine wave”
That’s wrong, and also the analyzer is not in peak-hold mode since otherwise it would eventually end up showing 0 dBFS signal.
Hmmm those were Rob Watts’ words when someone asked him about the -50dB signal level.
It’s all a bit too complicated for me though LOL
@Magnus the new Mac Mini M1 has been confirmed by Jussi to do DSD256 with EC modulators, running HQP Desktop.
This isn’t correcting regarding his RME ADI-2 DAC… He mentioned using it in ‘DSD Direct’ mode specifically…
Wait. With which oversampling filters? With poly-sinc-xtr-lp?
Hum… Here’s what @Magnus wrote:
On my RME ADI-2 I put volume locked at -3.5 dB and compared PCM 768 ext2 LNS15 with DSD128 ASMD7EC and ext2 (in DSD Direct), and to me DSD gives a more refined sound with an almost floating feel, compared to a little more crude and edgy PCM.
I read that as comparing PCM with DSD, with “(in DSD Direct)” applying just to the latter.
Since December there’s been a few people shared that it works with some combinations.
You can dig or ask on this thread for details:
HQ Player - Page 762 - Software - Audiophile Style
and
I’m getting a Mac Mini M1 myself soon (ships in 2-3 weeks for the config that I want - 16gb RAM and 1TB SSD). Not getting it for HQPlayer as I run Embedded on an i9-9900K already.
But I can test on trial version of HQP Desktop different filters when I have it in hand.
Seems to be a neat little machine, to bad its a Mac 
I will probably update my stationary instead with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X (and new motherboard), the rest in my old computer I can keep (chassi, fans, memory, SSD, cooler, power supply etc), Having a faster computer when developing and testing is always nice, and it will easily run DSD256 with ASMD7EC
But will wait until I hear from @jussi_laako about his impressions of the 5800X.
But you don’t have that path for PCM. So you need equivalent of that for PCM to compare. And Holo Audio for example gives you that option. Otherwise you are saying you like sound of the resource constrained delta-sigma modulators running from 352.8/384k (for rate inputs <= 352.8k) or 705.6/768k PCM rates with sample-and-hold oversampling over running non-resource constrained modulators from 12M rates. It is of course fine if you prefer that though.
Did you compensate the level differences before comparing in first place?
-2s version works, not the single stage one.
I got the machine put together, but it fails the POST with likely DRAM problems (HyperX Fury DDR4-3200), so it doesn’t start booting. I never seem to have luck with AMD systems… I’ve got new motherboard (ASUS Strix B550) and RAM and will try again tomorrow. (and the damn X570 mobo had chipset fan which wasn’t obvious from the Gigabyte website, loud little beast spoiling the otherwise quiet machine)
That is impressive. To run HQPlayer Desktop, the 256GB SSD version of the Mac Mini M1 with 8GB of memory is enough, right?
I can’t believe you can get a nearly silent system for $699 that will do DSD256 upsampling with the ASDM7EC modulator and the poly-sinc-xtr-lp-2s and poly-sinc-ext2 filters. Wow!
I read about that, seems very few motherboards have a bios that supports the new Ryzen CPUs, but at least some of them allows to update bios from USB without using the CPU. But in the worst case, you might need an older Ryzen CPU just to boot and update bios.
It looks like its very barely able to do it, which makes me wonder about the fans and noise level. Still impressive though, but maybe not optimal. You could probably DIYs some improvement though (remove top cover, add your own phat CPU cooler etc), but then warrant is bye bye.