OCXO oscillator input theme

[Confused]

Shouldn’t Ethernet provide the best audio quality input for the Devialets?

The Ethernet connection provides excellent sound quality. However, the Core Infinity board doesn't have an OCXO clock (let alone two 44.1 and 48 kHz and multiples) for best jitter performance. At the same time, you'd really need a lot of extra investment to achieve better than the Ethernet connection. In my case around USD10,000. Was it worth it? Probably not. I started compiling my external streaming set-up before the CI board came out and was already pretty good by the release of the CI board. I had a chance to borrow an upgraded unit from the dealer and the results were close. My streaming set-up sounded smoother, more detailed, and with a better timbre of instruments. It is probably partly the streaming hardware and partly the software. Devialet can use Air or Roon Ready whereas my streamer also can use HQ Player NAA which I find significantly better than Roon Ready as an endpoint. I eventually decided not to upgrade to D1000 from D800 for this reason but @Confused did and he still uses an external streamer as far as I know.

I'm not sure how I missed the reference above! Anyway, yes, my preferred route for feeding the Devialet is AES/EBU via an external streamer. I was experimenting with various "front end" configurations a while ago, basically comparing various configurations of the iFi Zen Stream, SOtM sMS-200Ultra, tX-USBultra, Mutec MC3+USB and REF10. Comparisons were made to feeding the Devialet via Ethernet / Roon RAAT. Whist messing about with what is some reasonably expensive streaming hardware, the one thing that I found particularly interesting was the difference that HQPlayer made to my ears. So even without the REF10/MC3+USB, the (relatively) cheap and cheerful Zen Stream on it's own in HQPlayer mode was to my ears significantly better than CI Board Roon RAAT.