This test is made by listening same pattern with high-detail pads and rock-style, but very clean, high quality drums, and lead synth + bass. The whole frequency range is covered more or less.
Linear, sample ramping 0: Damped, a bit rough and hardest on the ears (causes ear ache). CPU: 100 (scaled for easier comparison).
Cubic spline: A bit smoother. CPU: 110
Polyphase: The sound has more "air", and sense of space gets through better. The cutoff factor can be used to make the song sound softer and warmer without losing too much detail. For maximum detail, use high cutoff factor and low sample ramping. CPU:110
XMMS/Hamming, cutoff 97%: The bass drum seems markedly stronger and punchier with this setting (sample ramping 0). The airy sound is retainded. Bass line sounds warm and nice. CPU:95.
XMMS/Hann, cutoff 97%: Mid frequencies go more "in the back" with this setting. Also not as punchy as Hamming. CPU:100
XMMS/Blackmann exact, same cutoff still: Mid-highs feel smoother and more distinct. There is a change of character. Bass line is less "in front"
XMMS/Blackmann 4 tap 74: The sound is not much different from other blackmann-filtering. CPU:100
XMMS/Kaiser 4 tap: Nothing much to say about this, probably my ears are getting tired

Sounds like Blackmann filters. CPU:100
Overall: I think the winner was XMMS/hamming filtering, 97% cutoff, 0 ramping. The feeling of spaciousness and depth/feeling of bass were excellent, also the highs/mids were detailed but non- obtrusive. Strangely, seems this was the most CPU-economic setting (although not by far).
The differences were alltogether pretty subtle, but they were there. Perhaps the most surprising thing was that all settings consumed CPU almost equally (with all instruments and filtering, around 30%). I am running AMD athlon 64 3400+.
As subjective as this test was, maybe you end up with similar results?