It’s not surprising that there are misconceptions about this topic, when you have manufacturers saying things like:
Alan Ainslie , Melco Audio’s General Manager, told StereoNET :
With the acclaimed Melco N1 series, we eliminated the data switch from the data path (server to player) and lifted sound quality hugely. But it was still clear that the rest of the network was having an effect. It was, perhaps, less obvious on lesser systems, but as soon as we fixed everything else, it remained a nagging problem.
Work started to analyse exactly what was going on, and the resulting S100 resolves those final nagging sound quality issues. Crucially, while the S100 is clearly befit for Melco owners who use the PLAYER Ethernet port, the difference an S100 can bring to non-Melco systems is quite surprising, especially for the heavy traffic created in a Roon environment, as well as for streaming services such as TIDAL and Qobuz, where the data has been seriously compromised on its journey from the distant servers into the user’s home. The S100 restores the magic of the source stream as no IT device can possibly do.
Needless to say there is no further information about precisely how the data from TIDAL and Qobuz has been damaged on its journey, nor on what “magic” is being restored.