First of all, I agree that improving clock from stock industrial grade in network switch, network adapter devices can improve network performance and reliability to certain extent enough for audible improvements. I'm not against that at all. I also bought audiophile network adapter card and network switch for personal uses and upgrade clocks on motherboard's LAN port too.
But lately I saw many audiophiles focusing so much on networked audio stream to the extent that they put 10MHz on network switch or network adapter device. Sure that can make big changes and most consider it to be 'big improvement' but that's only when compare to stock grade clock and many privately admitted that some 10MHz input may need really good quality 10MHz clock to shine.
If they put this kind of effort into what really matters clock like putting 10MHz input into server as masterclock multiplying to 12-25MHz feeding motherboard chipset clock or storage device that keeps OS and music as source, yeah that'd be some really cool stuff befitting highend computer transport since those are actively used and can effectively use high quality 10MHz clock.
But for network protocol, it has 7 layers for basic infrastructure that has many underlying layer beneath making clock upgrade being less efficient due to many processes involved including error correction and packet fragmentation. Improvement from industrial grade network device to high precision/low phase noise clocks that can be swiftly replaced will also make big enough improvement too.
10MHz input clock in network will bring better improvement than smaller 25MHz clock in network adapter/switch under proper implementation that's for sure. But how much it'll be better than high quality clock with very low phase noise that can fit in there? I doubt there'll be audiophiles who'll try to upgrade clock on network adapter/switch with 10MHz input and compare with.
Let's break some theories here. Imagine you visit streaming service's data center and managed to request admin to upgrade clock on their servers. Do you think that will make streaming sounding so much better after running from another side of planet to your house? While clock upgrade can make noticeable improvement but that can be done to certain extent. That's what network is all about.
And the reason why I started this thread is to inform you that there's something more important than clock and something more dangerous, more sinister to your system than clock quality. It's everywhere in your house and in every networked device around you. Yes, it's router, device with full contamination of noise and pollution from other devices.
When you plug your server to your home router before using network switch, your router that has wifi spreading frequency and collect all the dust from other wired devices like TV, NAS, receivers that bounce back to your router and feed your server or streamer. You got those pollution from other devices to server via router too and that's the problem.
Some people made article before that using WiFi will get rid of this issue because it's not associated with other devices causing pollution. But they forget one thing, WiFi connection itself is also considered as big pollution and packet fragmentation in WiFi is far worse than wired network rendering 10MHz clock input to WiFi even less effective. There was time I got network phobia from discovering how network can really harm audio in ultra highend performance scale. I used to disable network completely and control from monitor for a while until I can get over it.
OK. Back to main story. As for these pollution hoping around wired network from devices to device, good network switch will have transformer placed behind LAN port to isolate noise and pollution from other devices. You can test this by using web remote feature to control your server so that network will have zero effect on audio itself and see how network switch and reduce pollution from router.
This feature that isolate pollution from router and other devices is the main reason why people should employ network switch. But not only that, it can also help in handling data transmission to be more reliable and more efficient with buffer in network and software vendor optimized for lower packet fragmentation than allowing router to handle everything manually.
So, no matter how much effort you put into clock upgrade, it won't reduce pollution from other devices in network. And another thing that most audiophiles overlooked is software implementation in network adapter/switch. As changing configuration in network adapter affect sound quality significantly, software configuration in network adapter/switch itself matters too no less than hardware circuit design. As we can't test and confirm about this part ourselves, there's not much we can do to verify though.
To summarize all these in few sentences, I want to share my research that clock isn't the most potent thing in networked audio and you should consider other things like handling pollution in network audio network and implementation in other aspects with higher priority. Don't just blindly go for clock upgrade and thing everything else comes second ignoring more pressing matters. And sometimes 10MHz clock input may perform worse than high quality clock upgrade on board if not done right too.
