Network Audio Players/Servers

Melco's custom dataswitch solution employs additional PSU smoothing, 1.5MB of FIFO buffering and a proprietary clocking system in its bid to deliver a low-noise, low-jitter Ethernet packet stream. Nevertheless, as the music data remains in the digital domain across the network (hubs, routers or switches notwithstanding) any uplift in subjective performance over a conventional NAS or other music library can only be inferred via a third-party DAC. Secondary re-clocking or jitter suppression within the network-attached DAC is also a factor here, so a DAC with excellent performance may not express a significant difference. Similarly, a DAC that incurs jitter at the chip level will not improve regardless of the S100's data signal conditioning.

Three very fine network-attached converters were tested with and without the S100 switch, using a 0.5m length of Melco's own CA1E cable – the Mytek Brooklyn Bridge [HFN Dec '19], Arcam CDS50 [HFN Jun '20] and Lumin D2 [HFN Jul '20]. The Mytek and Arcam DACs exhibit superb jitter rejection by default and the impact of the S100 was at the limits of measurement (~1psec). The Lumin D2 did resolve a repeatable difference, however, with correlated jitter reduced from 15psec to 10psec and uncorrelated noise squeezed by 0.4dB over a 146dB range [see Graph, below]. PM