[Tobias]

Pieter, I agree on the effects of ethernet noise filtering, as you describe it. Even better than the best power supplies are: No power supplies! (or additional electronics in the path way) 🙂

It makes perfect sense to me also that additional clocking, prior to the DAC, has been a topic for many years since the improvements when cleaning up noise is more inline what you would expect from “better clocking”, since the actual DAC clock will work better when cleaning up the noise. (words you used: Relaxed, less stress, agreeable)

The additional clocking is not actually doing anything at all, in form of clocking since the data is buffered in the DAC anyway and Jitter don´t travel on the network. The clocking just needs to be perfectly executed in the DAC, that´s all. For that to happen there can´t be any noise degrading that DAC clock. The additional clocking can however impact the the noise level positively, as a side affect. (Again, my own thoughts/conclusions)

Now, this was a side track, but to me this shows how it is possible that digital noise has always been the main problem and “simple” filtering and “airgapping” (WiFi extenders/4G receivers) is actually the best solution, not adding additional electronics/power supplies, which always comes with some level of noise in themselves. (my own theories again :-))