I know, my question is whether the changed impulse behavior in the illustration of the ADI-2 manual applies to the entire frequency spectrum or does it change depending on the frequency?

The clear answer is:
Low frequency pulses pass practically unchanged, no matter what filter is used.

The opposite is true for high frequencies, all filters are different, and do sound different - but only audible for audio at sample rates of 44.1 and 48 kHz.

The filter’s differences are:

• Frequency response: “Slower” filters have less treble energy on sustained signals, but higher output on pulses.

• Impulse response: “Slower” filters have less ringing.

• Shape of impulse response: “minimum phase” filters have less unnatural pre-ringing, opposed to “linear phase” filters, which have a high amount of unnatural pre-ringing.
(Remark: every musical instrument has post-ringing, resonance, but no instrument sounds before it’s played!).

• Aliasing artifacts: Too slow filters, or almost no filtering like the “NOS-Filter” causes too much aliasing artifacts that reach and smear the whole audio band.
Aliasing is a very strange, unnatural sound, the opposite of “ black background”.

So, selection of a DA-Filter is a compromise, kind of.

Subjectively changes in the treble seem to affect the bass, but that’s only relative.
Bass in music doesn’t ever appear isolated, and a bass-drum e.g. has significant energy even in the treble, so …

Personally my favorites filters are “Slow” on AKM-DA-chips and SD LD (Low Dispersion) on ESS-DA-chips.

Same named filters on AKM and ESS are not the same.

Kick = Bassdrum.

There‘s no natural instrument without overtones / treble.
The overtones and the attack phase define the character of the instrument, much more then a sustained second part of a musical note.

Every musical sound has a pulsive character by some amount (it does “start” somewhere), oppressed to a constant sine wave for measurement.
Every pulse, by physics, contains higher frequencies that are subjected to the influence of the DA-filter.

I think the point is: the specific ringing shown only happens with frequencies near SR/2. These frequencies are either non-existent, or very low in amplitude, or extremely short in time, so ringing at 22 kHz is a non-issue. Especially as this ringing is 22 kHz itself, so it is inaudible as well.

The example of a bass drum really bothers me, as it is so typical for wrong wording and thinking. A bass drum might subjectively have an attack (hence the association with 'kick'), but look at its waveform (a slow swinger even at the start of the waveform), and check the spectral energy - it is dead above 5 kHz. There is no real 'attack' at all, and absolutely nothing that could excite a filter ringing at 22 kHz.

So why do I hear a difference? (with headphones)

As an example in this sample, especially at the decay of the third note:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/17emPqb … share_link
Or this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MMu_Rb … share_link