Can the digital "signal" be over-laundered, unlike money?

I have a friend who also had a negative experience with an OCXO clocked network switch in front of the music server.  The switch is just a data packet transfer mechanism, but I actually think that it's injecting a certain type of "character" with the digital pulses it sends down the line to the server.

Having an OCXO clock in the dac or server generally does not have this type of result. 

This is all n assumption, though.

If additional clocking results in a sterile sound, two possible reasons apply:

1.mismatch when the device requires a sine wave and the clock provides a square wave or vice versa

2. when there is a cable mismatch or quality issue: e.g. 50 Ohm cable on 75Ohm port, long cable suffering from mirroring or RMI/EFI interference due to ineffectual shielding.

Superior clocking in my experience always results in superior rendition of the soundstage as well as intruments‘ attack and reverb

With anything digital, messing with the original signal is bound to result in a change.

Whether it is 'good or bad' will be a matter of personal opinion.

FWIW, I do believe digital will get very close to analog in the near future.

B

Thanks @david_ten  for posting this question. I presume network clocks solely affect sound stage, imaging, perhaps resolution. Some presume my issues with the added clock in audiophile switch is due to inferior quality of said switch. So, if the clocking in this switch is doing its job, I should have more precise sound staging, imaging, more resolution. My listening experience with switch confirmed my presumptions of what added clocking would do, more precise sound stage, imaging and a bit more resolution, in my case sound stage, imaging overly precise. It seems intuitive to me that a better/more expensive switch and/or clock would only increase that precision, this I don't want.

If this not the case, please explain how a higher priced, supposed higher quality clock/switch would improve over my switch/clock. Are there flavors of switches/clocks, do network appliances affect things like timbre, tonality, micro and macro dynamics? I've not heard any of these kind of changes with any of my network improvements, solely sound staging, imaging and resolution changes.

I've heard of the sine wave vs square wave issue, don't know if this is issue in this case.  And the attack and decay issue is an interesting concept, this allied to micro/macro dynamics. The defects in sound staging I'm hearing could be interpreted as micro dynamic issue, the overly precise imaging/sharp outlines mimics micro dynamic decay, but in my case solely sound staging related, no perceptive change in dynamics.

I'm certainly not alone in hearing defects with audiophile switches. Just not sure if their issues are the added clocking or something else?

Its also possible router mods have diminished my need for switch/added clock. I'm powering with over spec'd LPS (amperage supply greater than need) and added rfi shielding. Entire network and USB chain post server already optimized.

And my digital surpasses my tt setup by quite a large margin, and only sounds increasingly analog as resolution increases.

“Can the digital "signal" be over-laundered, unlike money?”

@david_ten,

Yes!!! And this is not limited to audio :-)

As with anything else in life, striking a ‘balance’ is the key. IME, careful selection of fewer high quality components and ‘sensible’ tweaking will always yield to superior sound vs. plethora of sub par components and ‘band-aid’ tweaks.

I subscribe to everything matters philosophy so efficacy of any single component or tweak squarely depends on rest of your system. A high quality ethernet switch or external re-clocker device is not going to magically transform your digital streaming if as an example there is a laptop, node 2 or mac-mini type of component ahead in the chain.