And you can't answer this yourself and come to conclusions ?

It depends on what you are up to.

Rob, frankly said, if you post a "facepalm question", which surely happened to everybody of us in our life, then you also have to live with certain reactions that are not meant insulting, but kind of "shaking ones head".

I was not rude. My counterquestion should give you the opportunity to re-think and re-phrase as the question was really not a hard one.

You opened this thread and presented yourself as somebody who is very selective and picky about very good sound quality: ADI-2 DAC, monitor system for $4000, internal DSP or not, avoiding additional AD/DA, who designed the HEDD and so on: https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=28649

And now you post this question whether you should activate or deactivate features in the Windows 10 sound system where it is self explaining from the name of the feature, that it will (severely) modify your (excellent) sound, which is fully against your high stakes / requirements for monitor selection in terms of good sound and quality.

This simply does not match.
Therefore my counterquestion with the best intention that you find it out yourself.

To your question / the different settings of Windows 10 sound system:

1. low frequency protection: cuts low frequencies. You spend $4000 for 3-way monitors with capabilities to reproduce low end frequencies in quality and ask whether you should activate this feature ? Makes no sense.

2. virtual surround: this will significantly change the whole character of the sound and sound stage.
This has nothing to do with high quality and is a clear "no go".

3. room correction: would be too nice if Microsoft will deliver to you a high quality solution to optimize audio for your non-treated room (bundled with the operating system at no cost). Ever saw a calibrated measuring microphone bundled with Windows 10? No. So better lets forget about it. Better get the high quality monitors, unmodified sound and better optimize your room in the usual way following best practices.

4. Loudness Equilization: you have $4000 quality monitors and a $1000 quality DAC with Bass controls, PEQ, dynamic loundess and think about whether or not to activate a bass booster deep in the Windows 10 settings ? Does not make any sense.

It should be clear to everybody with only a small basic understanding of HiFi that this is against good sound and quality and foremost against your high stakes / requirements in terms of good sound.

And now the most important thing:
if you use the RME ASIO driver which I regard as stongly recommended, then this all doesn't matter anyway, because an ASIO driver bypasses the Windows sound system entirely (in this case the above 4 settings have no effect at all).

All other applications, that do not support ASIO, like the Windows Operating, Internet Browsers (for Youtube, etc) would be impacted by activated settings in the enhanced sound settings.

Or - other case - if you should use the ADI-2 DAC
- without RME ASIO driver as "class compliant device" (using the Windows sound drivers) or
- if you should select a different sound driver than the RME ASIO driver in an application (like music player, etc.) or
- if you use a Windows application which is not ASIO aware
then such Windows 10 sound settings would also impact your sound negatively.

What to do ?
I would ensure
- to install and use the RME ASIO driver
- use music players that support ASIO
and deactivate these Win10 sound enhancements entirely, except if you have a certain use case for it (when perhaps using the internal sound for some stuff) or otherwise leave it at the default settings as suggested by Bejero.

If you want to enjoy music in highest quality, then I can only give to you the advice to stick to ASIO, because then it is guaranteed, that high quality / lossless audio is not being modified by the Windows sound system.

To proof that audio is unaltered in your signal chain (from music player up to your DAC) you can use the bit test files that RME provides: https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/bit_test_wavs.zip
Details please see handbook chapter 31.15: https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/adi2dac_e.pdf

Ramses, I don't care at all about your personal assessment of my question. I don't care about you, your opinion, or your supercilious, know-it-all attitude. I'm posting for information, a simple answer to enhance my understanding of the product. Not for your paragraph-length forum bullying  crap. Furthermore, in your rush to demonstrate your superiority and insult my question, you completely misunderstood it, and spent several paragraphs answering questions I am not even asking.

This forum is hardly worth visiting for exactly this reason.

Thanks Dax for the insightful, non-insulting answer.