As USB and Ethernet are packet based, you need to clock the timing of packets as well as the digital to analogue conversion. Reclockers only address the USB/Ethernet packet part of clocking accuracy.
The actual digital to analogue conversion clocking has major impact on spacial transparency and attack/reverb of the resulting analogue signal. While this has significantly improved in the last 5-10 years, the remaining room for improvement, particularly on Upsampling Delta-Sigma converters cannot be underestimated. This is why USB reclockers will always be only a partial solution. For this part, low phase noise, high accuracy clocks, whether atomic or OCXO have audible benefits. Since most Dacs don‘t have BNC Clock inputs, this may require both additional word- and masterclocks.
In an ideal world, having the master clock at the DAC, i.e. just before the conversion to analogue would be best, since buffering, error correction and noise suppression could all happen there. Unfortunately USB and Ethernet are both somewhat compromised because they both transport power and data alongside each other with resulting need for galvanic isolation and noise suppression.
In sum, there are good and bad implementations and compatibilities of interfaces and clocking. It follows that there is currently no ‘best’ way of connecting dacs and servers. This is also why the likes of Lumin and Naim are offering integrated DAC/streamer/Server solutions.
The actual digital to analogue conversion clocking has major impact on spacial transparency and attack/reverb of the resulting analogue signal. While this has significantly improved in the last 5-10 years, the remaining room for improvement, particularly on Upsampling Delta-Sigma converters cannot be underestimated. This is why USB reclockers will always be only a partial solution. For this part, low phase noise, high accuracy clocks, whether atomic or OCXO have audible benefits. Since most Dacs don‘t have BNC Clock inputs, this may require both additional word- and masterclocks.
In an ideal world, having the master clock at the DAC, i.e. just before the conversion to analogue would be best, since buffering, error correction and noise suppression could all happen there. Unfortunately USB and Ethernet are both somewhat compromised because they both transport power and data alongside each other with resulting need for galvanic isolation and noise suppression.
In sum, there are good and bad implementations and compatibilities of interfaces and clocking. It follows that there is currently no ‘best’ way of connecting dacs and servers. This is also why the likes of Lumin and Naim are offering integrated DAC/streamer/Server solutions.