Improving on the stream of a combined streamer dac

I don’t think with Ethernet you need to be afraid of silver being bright. Make sure there’s a return policy that you can take advantage of in case the cables don’t work out. Give each cable at least 2-3 days to settle with signal flowing thru it before evaluating.

With digital cables it’s all about timing and shielding. You need great quality best possible conductor, connectors and shielding against EMI and RFI as that factors into noise and crosstalk. Which you will hear as smearing, harshness, lack of definition, etc. 
 

op

1) check your roon settings for your endpoint, make sure they are set appropriately

2) before you question your electrocompaniet unit (it is quite good) i suggest that you better cleanse your inbound network feed... your trendnet switch is quite poor and should be replaced with an audiophile quality switch (there are many out there -- etherregen, paul pang, lhy, sonore, among others) ... that switch should powered by a linear power supply (some switches use outboard lps’s, some have them already built in)

3) ideally you would get a good audiophile switch with a built in port for an optical sfp module (and then use another optical module on the other end, on its own) so the lan feed can be cleansed via full galvanic isolation that way

these improvements will help whatever streamer/dac is downstream, so in that respect they are ’no regret moves’ so to speak

if you have done the above and the streamed music still sounds poor, then you question your streamer/dac

good luck and have fun

@jjss49 in what sense is the trendnet switch poor? Have you actually tried this switch?

I’m using the unmanaged 8 port 1g version (same as in OP’s setup). It does no harm in my system - I’ve tested with and without. With the trendnet switch I actually noticed a slight decrease in noise floor but that could be due to the WW Ethernet cable that’s feeding it.
On the other hand a similarly priced D-Link switch degraded the sound quality. It was ejected immediately. 

OK, again many thanks for all the input.  I am about to eat some crow, but will put that off for a bit.  For what its worth, Andrew Gillis of SGC fame recommends the least encumbered network switch and the Trendnet in particular. He feels a managed swtich can delay the signal and some other stuff I couldn't understand as I  have an analogue brain.  Now for the crow;  I rummaged through the closet where old cables live and my vacuum tubes hide from my wife, and dug up an old wire world starlight 8.  Substituted the Luna Orange ( switch to Streamer /DAC ) and voila, much improvement.  Actually sounds really nice,  So a nice outcome and it didn't cost me a thing.  Kudos to audphile 1 and all who have added their two cents.