Having finally updated to a Sandy Bridge platform and a dedicated Windows 8 installation, I've been using 2.5.0 for two weeks now.
I have to admit that while it sounds different from previous versions, it has, yet again, brought a new layer of realism, detail and holographic rendition of music. Simply amazing.
I've just tested the new 2.6.0 and while it is at least as good as 2.5.0 -I haven't has that much of a chance to listen to it yet obviously- I am wondering why it doesn't allow me to go down to the lowest latency setting. I used 2.4.9 and 2.5.0 with a 3 ms latency setting, but on this one anything at 5ms or below makes the sound crackle and basically not listenable. It works great with a slightly higher latency though, but I'm curious about what changed to make it that way compared to 2.5.0?
Edit: Interestingly, I can use 3 ms latency on timer mode with no issues and it sounds great (as good as event mode, possibly better as it seems to work better with my converter since 2.5.0). Actually, I can even go down to 0 ms in timer time, and it's just shown me the most realistic and "true to life" music I've gotten, period (including analog sources). How that's even possible is beyond me -can JEP technically have the digital signal go straight from the RAM and processor to output in realtime? This being said, I would highly encourage people to try it, going from 1 ms to 0 actually has a much larger impact than going from like 10 to 3 or 50 to 10 (yes, I know half of you think it is BS, which is why I encourage you to try it and give feedback).
So yeah, with no latency, 2.6.0 sounds out of this world, basically (again, on a separate fresh dedicated Win 8 x64 partition with nothing running, and no network access; I doubt you could do 0 ms while browsing the web or running multiple apps).