You could have twenty switches between your core and your endpoint, it wouldn’t make the blindest bit of difference to what comes out the other end, as long as they’re all designed to standard.
Do you have any idea how many switches, routers, media converters and so on, are between your endpoint and something like a Qobuz server?
Quite right on the switch chain length.
Having said that, the comparison with the path to the Qobuz server is an unfair one. RAAT to the endpoint is a far more latency sensitive relationship than that which exists between the Qobuz servers and the Roon Core. This is why Roon inhales so much from Qobuz before it streams it to the local endpoint. Roon stands in the breach between the at times variable Internet and the manicured pathway that is your home network.