receiver vs. sound card question.

[Modelworks]

How could they give a figure of 109dB without actually being able to attain it? Unless they are referring to negative decibels at lower volume levels?

The comparison I gave was regarding DACs and how they are measured. Like the SNR they give is for only one frequency 1Khz sine wave. So at 200hz it may be way different.
Right now there is a lot of tricks that are being used to rate them that don't tell the whole story. A pdf that explains it in detail

http://grouper.ieee.org/groups/1658/NextMeetingArchive/061030DAPONTE/DAPONTE_P.pdf

 

[Modelworks]

Jitter is as good as dead. Home receiver chips in use for the past 5+ years don't just send the signal to be decoded anymore. Instead the chip on the receiving end discard the incoming clock and use their own internal clock restoring audio to bit perfect status. The CS49300 has been used in receivers for over 10 years. The later versions that were released in 2006 rebuild the signal using precision clocks accurate . TI has sold spdif receivers for years that rebuild the clock to 50ps accuracy.