I decided last night to adjust steepness down a touch, and found a better balance for my system for addressing hot I found that on some albums the treble of cymbals and vocal sibilants were a touch forward and detracted from the positive SQ changes in v3.0.1. Overall dynamics, micro and macro, are increased. Upper bass textures were better resolved. Bass, especially midbass, had better control and dynamics, but seemed to lose a bit of lowest extension. In v3.0.1, I found an increased transparency across frequencies, more realistic imaging, and increased soundstage depth. Re: SQ of A+ v3.0.1 - at first I listened with same filter settings I used with v2.6.6. Your ears are your ears and as such the best indicator of what is both dynamic and natural sound.

You can download Audirvana 3.0 on a trial basis, so I suggest you do that and listen for yourself.

The DAC plays just as much a factor as does the software. I was interested in 3.x because of its MQA support and was not expecting improved overall improved sonics from non-MQA files. Moving from version 2.x to 3.x is not merely and update but an upgrade. My DAC is an exaSound e32 connected via USB. Connected to the Mac Mini directly via USB are two mirrored 8TB USB hard drives. My Mac Mini running the latest OS X - Sierra, with 16 GB of RAM. Surprising the sonic difference in quality from version 1.x to 2.x is not as great as from 2.x to 3.x (Note, I keep spare Mac Mini Late 2012 machines on hand, identically configured, so they can be swapped in and out when one fails). I set up three identical computers and had each versions on them. I am an Audirvana user since 1.5 and actually made a comparison of versions 1.x, 2.x and 3.x just yesterday.

BitPerfect 3.0.2 download