The “high quality” vs “enhanced” distinction is about intent, not objective audible differences. Both can be associated with SQ changes that are perceptible or not.
Enhanced processing can be all over the map. Make a bad EQ curve and it sounds like junk. Enhanced means “we did it cause you told us to, and we’re trusting that you made the right choice”. We consider the high quality items to be “transparent”–so, no I wouldn’t generally expect them to be audible in a “man off the street” ABX style rigorous test.
The purpose of the light in this case is to communicate that a quality/convenience tradeoff has been made–because that is what is happening when you perform digital volume adjustment in a bridge on the sMS-200 instead of doing it further down the chain in the DAC, Preamp, or Amplifier.
The only “objective” signal path status is “Lossless”. The remainder are purely editorial.
There was a pretty detailed discussion about these product choices a few weeks ago in this thread:
Yes. DSP volume happens in the endpoint–if it didn’t, there would be a 5-10 second latency for volume adjustments. Not good. The vast majority of endpoints do not have the horsepower to perform DSP volume adjustments on DSD (including your SOtM), so we do not support this.
This question comes up very frequently…this one got a more detailed answer if you’re interested: