Well the jury is still out here. After about 3-4 hours of listening to some of my personal go to reference material, I still hear some air on top but also extra energy —albeit not substantially so. I’m not sure I’ll land on Filter 2 given my speakers are horn topology.
I once tried a SMSL DAC that had a handful of Filter settings and found none very audible if at all. Here it is more noticeable yet still fairly subtle.
I’ll give it a week or two and see if I go back to Filter 1. Thanks for your thoughts.