As mentioned above the new feature is quad rate DSD input over I2S (DoP or native DSD) and 24bit 705.6kHz PCM comes along for free. (192k is still the highest non 44.1 multiple available.)
There have been multiple changes to increase sound quality. With each release we build and listen to software to test various non-sound related changes. It’s almost always the case than one of the early builds grabs people’s hearts with the sound quality, but can’t be released because something was disabled for testing or something got broken. When the release is ready technically it usually doesn’t sound as good as the favorite build before that. This happened to us with the first software released after the initial DS shipped years ago and also to most releases up to and including this one.
Since I know exactly what changed in each FPGA I send to PS Audio I sometimes know exactly what I did that hurt sound quality. That’s fortunate since it shows me exactly where some possible improvements can be made. This time after four versions that got back piece by piece the quality of the favorite version we got one that seems to have no bugs and seems to sound at least as good as any other version (ever). Like many previous releases the main thing I worked on was when in time various things happened. For this final release I realized that there were some features of the internal PLLs in the FPGA that I hadn’t been utilizing that give finer control of clock timing.
I don’t know exactly how to describe the sound quality differences, but they are obvious and most just don’t want to install older releases again to A/B, there’s no need. The bass is (once again) clearer and more obviously correct (the change is in the “damn!” category.) Over all tone is better, the top is more open. All of which is to be expected with a quieter background (lower digital noise) and lower jitter.
I also think I’ve killed off the gremlin that caused Windom to go south overnight every once in a while. It was holding back Windom a little all of the time so it’s fix is welcome in more than one way.
You’ll like the new release.