Melco dedicated media library improves S/N ratio of DAC vs Mac

[Orb]

I get the feeling they are suggesting it is below audibility, but then it is interesting to read the review and how his subjective thoughts correlate to the measurements; minimal improvements when using ethernet and cheaper solutions could provide comparable results but notable improvement when using USB.
Audibility and measurements will always be a bone of contention, whether level of noise/signal, jitter (but then need to differentiate between the types), digital filters (especially when talking about CD sampling rate) and time-frequency domain behaviour,etc.
Just need to shrug and accept even if you provide all the information such as the Hi-fi News review and results some people will interpret it differently or ignore it due to being a hifi magazine or ignore because it is a review (even with measurements that correlate to the reviewer's experience).
Cheers
Orb

 

[jkeny]

FYI - I posted something related to Melco yesterday

http://www.head-fi.org/t/766380/apple-touch-6g-128gb-info-and-impressions-5g-vs-6g/75#post_11810763

Someone over there still insisted that all transports were supposedly created and there should be no differences when we're comparing one to another. Weird?

Ah, there will always be someone who makes claims that "theory" says it's inaudible so therefore it is inaudible. You will even have people say all things to do with audio were worked out 30, 40 years ago - go figure

What interests me is that the graphs show Ethernet delivery to have a higher noise floor by about 10dB (ignore the -140dB as being the true noise floor - this is an FFT & we need to know the gain to calculate the "actual noisefloor). I'm looking at the graphs & the best USB has "grass" at -145dB @48KHz/24bit whereas the best Ethernet has grass at about -135dB @96KHz/24bit
Could the increase of 10dB in the noisefloor on Ethernet be masking any audible improvement when using the Melco?