I did the Cat 6 and cord. Both better. Then I bought a Topping D90 and that was a big difference. There are lots of other brands of good DAC. Schiit, Denafrips, Sabaj, Border Patrol, Chord, Mytek, Lumin to name a few. I connected it with a coax cable. The external power supply looks interesting. I have also wondered about that for the DAC as well.