I agree, something subtly different with poly-sinc-gauss keeps me coming back to it vs poly-sinc-gauss-xla.
For my Soekris dac1321 R-2R DAC, I’ve gotten hooked on sinc-Mx with LNS15, 8X PCM. For this DAC it sounds very natural across a wide range of music.
I have no explanation but I get some listening fatigue with gauss-xla after long listening sessions with modern music.
Zero listening fatigue with gauss.
So I leave it at poly-sinc-gauss and it’s happy days
I also find gentler/shorter filters more gentle on ears. Especially depending on how much transients there are in the content. Although you don’t necessarily “hear” the filter ringing, it may cause listening fatigue. IMO, it is all about finding sweet balance between frequency and time domains that have 1/x mathematical relationship.
I know you said EC modulators have better transient response. And when I upgrade Mac I will use EC modulators because I will feel better inside knowing it is technically better.
But comparing ASDM7 and ASDM7EC I don’t here any different with this track at the moment.
Of course ASDM7 is already high quality!
Qobuz official app on iPad 4 → 24bit/96kHz UAC2 input of UpBoard Gateway → HQPlayer DSD256 poly-sinc-gauss → RPi4 NAA OS → RME ADI-2 DSD Direct → SMSL SP400 THX AAA 888 headphone amp → Focal Utopia Headphones
Both sound fantastic !
Is this music not punchy enough to demonstrate the difference?
I too have been having positive results with the poly-sinc-gauss, ASDM7, DSD 256 as well.
What’s best is that my 6 year old laptop, i5, 8 gb ram running the HQPlayerEmbeded USB image handles it just fine.
Great use of previously unused gear.
I’ve since changed (back!) to poly-sinc-short-mp-2s
Better time domain performance with a tradeoff on frequency domain.
But so far today I don’t feel desperate to go back to linear phase poly-sinc-gauss
Will leave it here for a couple weeks and see if I just forget about it, like I had with poly-sinc-gauss for a couple weeks.
I tried poly sinc short mp for fun. My laptop choked on that, -2s works though. Will give it a try for awhile.
Feels ‘punchier’ 
Something I’ve been wondering for a while now - why does HQPlayer output 24 bit PCM, when I have it set to 32 bit? I’ve tried on two different DACs that both support 32 bit input. Not that anyone really NEEDS 32 bits, but I don’t understand why it’s not outputting 32 bit.
thanks!
Starting to reach some “conclusions”:
Soekris dac1321: x8 PCM, Sinc-L, LNS15
Allo Revolution: DSD512, AMSDM7 512+fs, poly-sinc-gauss (-ext2 and -short-mp-2s sound really good as well)
I like the way @dabassgoesboomboom put it: let’s run these for a few weeks and see if I can forget they are even there.
It was my understanding that the new poly-sinc-guss family was equally effective in both domains??? Why do you label it “linear phase”?
I think I still like sinc-Mx upsampled to 1.536 on my Holo May.
Depends what you mean by “equally”. Jussi explained a few posts above “it is all about finding sweet balance between frequency and time domains that have 1/x mathematical relationship.”
If by ‘equally’ you mean sweet balance then yes 
Good question, right now I can’t actually recall why my brain said poly-sinc-gauss family is linear phase.
Maybe @jussi_laako can clarify. I don’t see mention in the manual.
If DAC uses max 24-bit resolution, or HQPlayer detects that there’s a 24-bit link. You cannot force HQPlayer to go higher than it detects DAC being capable of. Sending too many bits would result in truncation and distortion. For example S/PDIF and AES/EBU are limited to 24-bit.
poly-sinc-ext2/3 and poly-sinc-gauss are linear-phase.
Very interesting. I’ll have to look into this more. I thought the Allo Revolution could support 32 bit, but maybe not. It’s a USB input, but perhaps they limited it down to 24 bit.
As usual - thanks for the great software! I’m learning a lot and listening to some great music!
I just realized I’m able to run poly-sinc-gauss with the ASDM5EC modulator as long as adaptive output rate is checked. This is light years better than ASDM7 (and ASDM7EC is not an option on my 4 GHz Core i7-4790K - Devil’s Canyon). I’ve settled on the following for now, which is already pushing the limits of what my CPU can handle.
At present I am using HQPlayer as an alternate sound engine for roon. I have the filters and shaping set to none. It is a definite improvement. If I go back to filters it will probably be pcm and guass family.
I agree, ASDM5EC is great. Have you tried AMSDM7 512+fs with poly-sinc-gauss? For me it uses roughly the same CPU as ASDM5EC, but sounds better on my setup.
I’m only upsampling to DSD256, but I gave it a shot and its immediately more fatiguing (which is unfortunately since it takes up half the CPU of ASDM5EC on my setup).
I think you have to use at DSD512 to get the fully benefit. But like most settings with HQPlayer it’s all about synergy with your setup.
I went back and re-tried ASDM5EC and really enjoyed it. I may split time between these setups and see which one is more enjoyable long term.
