Just installed 1.10.22 fw and spent about 15min listening. I kid you not, have my PAW Gold next to me, and I can't hear too much difference between LPG and Opus#1. If anything, Opus#1 is slightly more balanced/neutral while LPG has a little stronger mid-bass impact. I think I prefer Opus#1 over LPG at the current moment. Can't believe I'm actually saying that.
Regarding changes, right away I noticed that 3.5mm SE and 2.5mm Balanced have the same volume level now. I'm a bit surprised. Before, balanced output was noticeably louder, but now they sound nearly the same. Testing with ES60, had my volume set at 65, sounds nearly the same from SE vs Balanced. Another big change, soundstage width improved slightly AND the whole soundstage expansion is now nearly the same between SE and Balanced HO outputs. Again, without downgrading the fw, I remember balanced output was slightly wider in addition to louder. Now, it would be hard to tell them apart, both powerful enough, nearly the same sound quality, and nearly identical soundstage expansion. And, now it's sounds even wider than LPG.
Regarding other stuff I mentioned in one of my earlier impression posts, nothing else has been fixed. Boot up still takes about 30 seconds, after a few minutes of screen off it goes into some sleep mode where you can't use external transport controls, the artwork is messed up where the wrong ones shows up under different files, and when you start playing files from the root /Music/ directory, and skip through it (click Next) - it doesn't skip through the files in order how they appear in /Music/ directory, but rather builds up a Play Queue of all the files including subfolders and skips through that queue. For now, the only solution for me is to create /Various/ folder where I put my loose files so I can skip through that folder separately. Also, when you enable EQ, it doesn't tell you which custom EQ#1 is selected. Again, all this are minor FW issue which could be easily fixed. Overall, sound quality is fantastic!!! I'm also thinking if boosting the core voltage had anything to do with a power level being the same between balanced and single ended. Not sure how it could be related, but I have no other explanation.
Ok, so anybody else noticed that single ended and balanced outputs are nearly identical now?