Is a USB stick directly into ones streamer (renderer) better than streaming from a PC/NAS?

And that is quite logical if you consider that a network cable is included in a digital chain. A chain that relies on clean energy to keep everything clocked tight. A chain that works with noise-levels of -140dB. A chain where small deviations are immediately audible in staging, focus and smoothness.

No DACs can do -140db noise floor, and if they could there is not a person who could hear it .

What we observe almost immediately is that the version with the shielding fixed on both sides focuses better. The version with shielding on one side seems to play a bit larger, but that is not true: the effects in the song Perfect Life by Steven wilson are placed at the same spot in the room, but are more tightly framed with the cable where the shielding is fixed on both sides.

So shockingly low levels of noise caused things to "play a bit larger", or are "more tightly framed" ... and better when both ends are connected to shield. If this person had the first clue how our hearing works, or the electronics they are working with, they would realize how silly this is. Grounding the shield at both end is to reduce EMI susceptibility primarily in noisy commercial environments with high speed transfer. However, if you are doing analog electronics, it is  great way to create a ground loop. BRILLIANT!  Let's take the fully isolated nature of Ethernet and introduce the potential for a ground loop then call it better?

p.s. The indicated pretty clearly I thought that every test was sighted. Given their lack of knowledge of how things work, they had already prepped themselves for the answer.

When I look at the value of my time then streaming services and Roon are pretty easy to justify. I think many of us have more money than time these days unless you're retired. Then there is the whole aspect of the user interface. I can't remember the last time I used something like a memory stick for music storage definitely more than a decade ago. The phone provides the music for the car with more than adequate quality.

I think if I took a poll I would find that more people who use turntables more and have two amplification are the ones complaining about noise then those with all solid state and primarily digital. It's a guess but I have a feeling it's going to be somewhat accurate. What does that tell me? I think most people can figure that one out. You can transfer noise over USB but that can be solved for somewhere between 20 and $100. Noise over ethernet is a really big stretch at best. And who is to say that there's not something screwed up in the DAC powering the USB stick doesn't cause more noise?

Whether the digital Data is sourced from USB or ethernet the clock for the DAC is the couple from the data source. There is no evidence that the incoming data connection causes jitter on the output. That would be very very difficult to occur on ethernet and while theoretically possible due to electrical noise on USB there is little evidence that actually happens. For USB isolators are relatively inexpensive. The noise generated internally in the DAC is going to exceed external noise generally by a significant amount. The edge speeds in modern logic are quick meaning that small amounts of noise generate insignificant amounts of jitter.