Melco's N50-S38 sports the company's classic styling, with the handcrafted unit benefiting from a 1.7 mm-thick full-width chassis along with re-engineered isolation feet.

Under the hood, you will find an enhanced mainboard with a “specially selected” 3.84 TB SSD drive coupled to the new rigid, layered SSD cradle, plus a new dynamic PSU with 25% more output linked to a noise-filter equipped IEC power inlet.

You also get four USB ports: USB 3.0, Expansion, and Backup, plus a dedicated USB DAC output for connecting the N50-S38 to USB DACs or similarly equipped amplifiers and active speakers.

Ease of use is the name of the game here, with the ports enabling USB devices to connect and operate effortlessly without any configuration, including importing or playing music from memory devices, HDD/SSD drives, and CD drives (CD 'rippers'); as well as storage expansion via Melco's E100, for instance, or other storage drives. Lastly, it also offers easy backup to HDD/SSD drives.

Naturally, you also get Melco's dedicated dual Ethernet ports. Here you have a dedicated 'Player' port to connect to a streamer, in addition to the standard LAN port. Melco states that this minimises the unwanted effects of noise on the music signal while the network audio player benefits from a direct, high data-integrity connection.

Control has also been designed to be straightforward via the fascia push-button controls and OLED screen plus Melco's Intelligent Music Library suite comprising MinimServer and SongKong software.

Being Roon Ready, you also get the option to utilise Roon's excellent interface. Melco's N50-S38 is also DSD compatible and offers app control via DLNA/UPnP (in USB DAC mode) with support for TIDAL, Qobuz and vTuner streaming. Qobuz Downloader and HighResAudio.com also enable direct, error-free high-res downloads without the need for a computer.

The Melco N50-S38 (silver) and N50-S38B (black) are available now priced at US$5,499 | S$6,900.

Visit Melco for more information