Eliminate USB from the chain?


I borrowed a Naim UnityQute2 over the weekend that I ended up really enjoying with my Harbeths. I get the Naim/Harbeth love now, even with an entry level unit no longer in production.
One thing I noticed when A/B’ing with my setup is that things sounded cleaner and clearer through the Naim at a microdynamic level, esp at low volumes when streaming Tidal. My SMS-200 into Ideon Audio 3R v.2 (makes a huge difference for the better IMO) into the Job INT amp sounds impressively clean and spacious, for a USB setup but I feel like the UnityQute2, with just ethernet going straight in and no USB in the chain had some sonic advantages that brought it closer in some ways to CD or CD rips on a server. Anyone else have this experience? Makes me rethink everything really. 
We buy all these high end cables and reclockers etc to improve the USB signal when just eliminating USB entirely from the chain seems, in my limited experience admittedly, to be the simplest and best performing option. I'm now looking at all in one options as potentially superior for those doing a lot of streaming. would a higher end USB streamer/server get me closer? I'm sure but then we are throwing more and more money at it just to reach the level of an entry all in one.  While my USB setup is entry level, so is the Unity so it's a pretty fair comparison I believe. 
Anyways, I know this is just small sample size so I'm not trying to draw any definitive conclusions personally from this. So I defer to others here to see if they have had similar experiences when moving to an all in one unit that eliminated USB from the chain completely. Cheers!
128x128clarinetmonster2
In USB, Firewire, and Ethernet there is no issue of clock jitter since there is no clock related to D/A conversion. Information is sent as a data. The issue is to keep just right amount of it. Too much will overflow receiver’s buffer while too little will cause gaps in music. For instance, in most common async USB implementation data is delivered about every 1ms (1kHz rate) in frames containing many samples. DAC places each frame into buffer signaling back under or overflow to which computer adjusts size of next frame. DAC feeds D/A converter with the data from the buffer at its own independent clock. Timing of this independent clock D/A conversion can only be affected by increased amount of electrical noise inside, that can possibly come from the outside injected by the cable. That’s why removing power lines from USB cable, better shields or galvanic isolation can help. Reclocker with async USB is just repeater with galvanic isolation (no need to reclock since 1ms clock jitter is not important).
But I would also reiterate that no matter how good the noise/jitter rejection is of a USB implementation in a DAC or streamer, they still seem to almost always respond positively to re-clocking/regeneration etc with an external device. USB can't be that great by nature for audio. This is going back a few years but those older Weiss DAC's with firewire connections showed a lot of promise. I'm sorry that never caught on for the most part.
thanks for the response. It’s not really about ethernet vs USB per se as streaming setups will either have both (ethernet into a streamer and USB to the DAC) or just 1 (ethernet directly into a streaming device/DAC.) So it’s more about one ethernet connection versus 2 or sometimes 3 or more connections depending if there is a USB device in the chain to improve the signal. It seems to me that there is strong potential for the the simpler connection to be of higher fidelity if designed well.
Both Async USB and Ethernet don't operate in real time (timing doesn't matter).  Because of that the only thing that counts is DAC's sensitivity to external electrical noise and amount of this noise injected in each scheme.  Ethernet should be a little better, but I wouldn't be surprised if you find DAC that has better (or as good) implementation of USB than Ethernet.