Zune HD SNR - Tested

[DampCookie]

About a month ago I picked up a ZuneHD 16gb of ebay (I live in Canada....) and decided to pit its SNR against that of my only other (good) Mp3 player; the Samsung Yp-z5. I've been trawling the internet in search of the ZuneHD's Signal to Noise Ratio, but haven't had any luck, so I used the z5 as control.
I generated an Mp3 clip of silence in Audacity, then played back the clip @ full volume from both players, and recorded it with my computer. Both from my subjective listening tests of both players, and also from the objective testing/freq analysis of the SNRs, both are almost exactly equal (from subjective testing, I would pick the ZHD by a hair...). In the analysis, both players have the same 7KHz spike, but the Zune has a lower high-pitched "buzz". The z5 has an SNR of anywhere from 85-89dB depending where you get your figures, so the Zune would probably be 86-90dB.
For you nit-pickers: Yes, I know that different music formats, the recording equipment and the difference in full output volume will all affect the SNR results. This is more of a preliminary test- feedback & more testing would be great.

Note: Picture 1 is of the recordings w/ the top being the computer, the second the yp-z5 and the third the zuneHD. Also, the next three pics are of the noise analysises (is that the plural??), in the same order.

[p0ke37]

wOW, THIS IS A PRETTY GOOD TEST. iF i KNEW HOW TO DO THIS, i WOULD PARTICIPATE

[dfkt]

For a more standardized and comprehensive test, try RMAA (another good app is ARTA, but RMAA is more informative and easier to use). Of course such tests benefit from having a decent sound card in your computer as well, consumer stuff like eg. Creative or Realtek sound cards will give sub-par results. I assume the 7kHz spike results from either your sound card or some problems with your electrical wiring, and not from the players.

Without headphones plugged in, all portable players I've measured so far have near-perfect SNR, close to the headroom 16bit audio allows (theoretically 96dB, practically around 90dB). However, paired with a low impedance phone, measurements get way different. It's also overly audible with most players that low impedance phones are prone to - which in every case is much worse than theoretical SNR limits.

[DampCookie]

*One year later* - Resurrection time.

Yeah; I`m guessing that my computer has a pretty crappy sound card, very consumer level. It does its job as a decent way for me to record LPs, and play back music. That 7khz spike is almost undoubtably all from the computer.

That being said, an audible high-pitched hiss can be heard from both the Z5 and the ZHD... I might end up using my school's "Logger Pro" sound analyzer softer+hardware to check this. But the unlikelihood of that is very high...

Has anybody else more thoroughly tested the ZHD's SNR yet?