For a decade or more, I went thru applying many of the USB tweaks to try to better the sound quality of USB to the dac, some made a little difference, others nothing, and others made things worse. After playing wasting my money on USB stuff and dac, decided to get a great sounding dac with ethernet and i2s inputs and the sq hasn't been better.
Now, for a couple of years, I have started seeing some of the same tweaks/gimmicks being applied to ethernet. I have tried a couple with little improvement, have been to audio shows with thousands of $$$ worth of ethernet tweaks/gimmicks, and the systems sounded worse. Bottomline, instead of applying many upstream hacks on ethernet, run fiber as the last leg to the dac and no noise/junk will get thru to the dac.
Or better yet, if you have a system that uses i2s to the dac, use fiber to the device that then connects to the dac.
Now, for a couple of years, I have started seeing some of the same tweaks/gimmicks being applied to ethernet. I have tried a couple with little improvement, have been to audio shows with thousands of $$$ worth of ethernet tweaks/gimmicks, and the systems sounded worse. Bottomline, instead of applying many upstream hacks on ethernet, run fiber as the last leg to the dac and no noise/junk will get thru to the dac.
Or better yet, if you have a system that uses i2s to the dac, use fiber to the device that then connects to the dac.