  We extend our previous study of taste-symmetry breaking using HYP-smeared
staggered fermions in two ways. First, we improve the statistics of a
comparison of unimproved and HYP-smeared staggered fermions on quenched
lattices with $a\approx 0.1 $fm. This allows us to obtain a signal for all pion
tastes, rather than just a subset, and thus to make a complete comparison. In
addition, it allows us to differentiate between wall and local sources. Second,
we compare HYP-smeared valence quarks to asqtad valence quarks on 2+1 flavor
unquenched MILC lattices. We find that taste breaking is substantially reduced
by HYP-smearing, bringing the size of this discretization effect (which is the
dominant such effect with staggered fermions) down to the size expected
generically for any fermion type.
