are NET Switches worth considering?

@lalitk understood thank you.  I actually use the ifi LAN iPurifier too in front of the switch.  

@lalitk thank you! 

@zlone 

Actually, Sonore offers streamers that accept optical input, so you don’t necessarily have to give back any of your noise reduction gains.  Not sure if there are others.  

@grannyring 

If you don’t want to deal with overseas shipping, check this out. There are quite a few US retailers that are carrying Matrix Audio components and have generous return policy. 

https://www.matrix-digi.com/product/125/SI-1

It is all pretty counterintuitive. As the thinking goes, this is not about packets and the ethernet protocol, which is "perfect" by design. Instead it is about noise elimination. In my experience, a change like a better network switch, fiber isolation, reclocking, master clock, etc, each contribute to removing noise. With each step things can improve ... and you don't know the noise was there until its gone. 

I started with Etherregen. Then LPS for the Etherregen. Then added master clock. Each made a really big difference, the clock most of all, which just doesn't make sense to me, but here we are. 

Fiber in theory should be best, but I found ethernet to have more life and more bite and on most music think it is better. But currently I'm trying out the Gustard NP18 as media converter, then fiber to the NP18 Pro that is connected to the same master clock as my Etherregen. This is very nice! The LHY mentioned above does some of this in a single box, but without the external clock.

There are many permutations. Way too many.

Ethernet cables sound different too. Supra is hard to beat for the money. 

I've come to believe that all of the upstream system for streaming matters more than the dac. But maybe I'll end up where @grannyring is now and revert back to a raw feed from my router. What I do know right now is that if I remove the external clock, everything collapses. Turn it back on and it's holographic again.