Our most recent and on-going research into sound quality of music reproduced from data streamed via a wired Ethernet connection has shown us two things. Both the precision of timing of Ethernet data arriving at the streamer, and the absence of RFI mixed in with it are crucial for the best ‘analogue sounding’ music reproduction.
The external clock will definitely improve the timing of the data, it will get you a good improvement, but without the RFI filtering you won’t get to the ultimate your equipment can do.