my main point in this whole thread has been that it is very common for many of us to cite “lower noise” to explain differences in sound that we can’t otherwise explain. but there’s this weird cognitive dissonance among many when confronted with actual measurements of noise; they cite marketing materials promising “decreased jitter and noise” and their experience of improved sound, rather than accepting actual evidence and then trying to figure out more plausible explanations for what they’re hearing.
by way of example, on another thread a while back, the op was insisting that a new streamer’s noise level had to explain the improvement in sound he was experiencing. when pushed to reveal what his actual A/B experience was, it turned out he preferred a non-oversampling algorithm that deferred to the native sample rate of his new set-up vs. the always oversampled algorithm of his old setup. in other words, he was definitely hearing a difference, he just hadn’t done the right analysis to figure out why.