Hi, I am at the end of MC25 trying periode and have a "complaint" about a very positive, even dramatic change to MC24 sound quality which came as very pleasant surprise.
I am a mostly classical audiophile (having made the Phillips Golden Ear Challange in one sitting session) and have experienced a very pronounced sound performance improvement from MC24 and MC25 , which I coudn't find advertised.
I observed this with RME Babyface (and also to some extent LH GeekOut v2 Infinity) with Genelec boxes.
And also between ASIO driver and WASAPI, WASAPI giving the markedly more dynamic and spacious, natural experience than ASIO. Also 32 Bit (Integer) output made an improvement, albeit the RME accepts 24Bit audio inputs only. (Not dependent on the equalizer improvement, which was announced.)
All parameter settings are being equal (MC24 vs MC25 and ASIO vs. WASAPI within MC25) , so the reason is obviously not within the algorithms in the audio path. The only explanation I could imagine are some internal parameter settings, which might hit a sweet point of the DAC but only in combination with WASAPI.
I couldn't achieve this very good performance even playing with HQ-Player's many filtering possibilities and advanced DSD conversions.
The drawback (and that is my complaint) with WASAPI is that the sample rate needs to be set manually to the actual audio source, MC is not capable to adjust automatically (ASIO does this).
Is there any exact explanation? Perhaps could Jim find this observation useful as a real potential for further improvement also for ASIO and for other DACS.