Importance of clocking

Just buy a good DAC and life is good.  
 

Keep it simple is often the best policy. 

@mapman 

Very good, simple, elegant solution. 

Would love 'simple,' but complex has reaped sonic benefits!

It is vitally important in such discussions that we avoid conflating/confusing the ethernet domain (up to the input side of a streamer) with the bitstream domain (output side of streamer onwards).

@erik_squires is spot on here. The ethernet domain is asynchronous and based on packets/frames being distributed, with error-checking and resend built in to the 7-layer OSI protocols. It stops at the streamer where these packets/frames are converted to a continuous bitstream. At this point, streamer output side onwards, clock accuracy is important to sound quality but there is no mechanism for clock accuracy in the ethernet domain to have any effect on sound quality.

An ethernet clock may be quieter of course, and this could conceivably impact SQ, but I’ve never heard any manufacturer argue that theirs is.

Innuos are careful in their PhoenixNet blurb NOT to assert that the clock they use in it, which is the same as in the Statement I believe, has the same effect on sound quality. They talk instead about the proximity of the clock to processor avoiding the risk of data losses which might conceivably occur with an external clock (though personally I struggle to see this).

Hope this helps clarify.

I can only reiterate what I hear: Etherregen with and without external clock are miles apart. So something happens ahead of the streamer that is affected by the clock. Interestingly John Swenson acknowledge the beneficial effect in his white paper, too.