It all started in 2014 when out of curiosity I bought the Audioquest Dragonfly Black from Richer Sounds. Prior to this music streamed from my PC sounded awful. With this DAC free Spotify took on a completely different perspective and was listenable. In the years prior to this my CD collection had expanded by leaps and bounds because they had become so cheap with streaming and downloads taking over the mass market. The racks of CDs were were growing and taking up a lot of space to the detriment of domestic harmony. Furthermore, although out of politeness I was not told so in so many words, I was considered a luddite by the step children and friends for clinging on to antiquated technology.
I concluded that streaming was the way to go and embarked on the lengthy process of ripping all my CDs and selling nearly all. This took years. They are now all available on my NAS and thoroughly backed up. At the same time I upgraded to Spotify Premium for a short time before discovering Tidal. The difference lossless made was night and day even through a far less resolving system than I have now. I would later change to Qobuz which I found slightly preferable in terms of SQ. Qobuz also had the advantage of letting you know the sample rate. I found all the smoke and mirrors about MQA off putting. I find most, but not all, Qobuz streams to be superior to ripped CDs through remastering.
The DF Black provided good service until the start of 2016 when I upgraded to the Chord Mojo. Shortly before I had bought quality Grado headphones and wanted to make more of them so the Mojo served a dual function. Two years later I upgraded to the recently introduced Qutest as I wanted a DAC which did not require charging, the Mojo being retained for domestic headphone duties only. There was a major milestone a few months prior to the purchase of the Qutest with the acquisition of the Sonore MicroRendu. I was immediately taken aback by the very significant improvement in SQ and became aware of the nasties streaming from the PC was introducing. By this time I must add the analogue part of my system was NVA.
Qobuz started streaming some of my favourite albums at 192kHz and they sounded so much better. I struggled to hear a difference between 44kHz and 96kHz, but to these ears 192kHz was a definite uplift. This lead me to look at something in small print in the Qutest manual which I had almost forgotten about. It said the Mscaler would significantly raise the performance of the Qutest with the dual BNC inputs raising the sample rate to 765kHz. This I had to hear at my local Audio T in early 2019. The audition through WAF speakers turned out to be something of an endurance test but I stuck it out in the hope of a home loan which was arranged. Connected to my system it was something of a revelation and music had never sounded so enjoyable. The credit card took a battering for what I consider to be the major milestone. What the Mscaler does was most apparent in the considerable time I had to wait for one to come into stock. There was something lacking, you could call it emotion along with a reduced sound stage and I was playing less music.
Cisco switches at give away prices started to receive a lot of attention on forums and this was something I could not resist. My first switch was positioned close to the router and brought about a slight improvement in SQ. The improvement was far greater when a second one was added close to the streamer. Cables also received attention with Farnell's Cat 8 ethernet connecting the router to the switches and Cat 6 connecting the wall socket to the router, Cat 8 not appropriate. A quality short length of DH Labs ethernet connected the second switch to the streamer. I have a high regard for DH Labs digital cables which I slightly prefer to Audioquest Carbon. DH Labs USB connects the streamer to the Mscaler which is connected to the Qutest via two of their BNC cables.
Replacing the PC with a streamer alerted me to the very significant impact digital noise has on SQ. This lead to the acquisitions of the AQ Jitterbug and ifi iPurifier which brought about subtle improvements in proportion to their prices, connected at both ends of the USB cable. What has made a difference, which is not subtle and a lot more costly, is the Network Acoustics Eno ethernet filter. I read a favourable review of it on WAM and was sceptical as I am about all reviews. As there was a return option, it was lockdown in the middle of winter and I was going to have a miserable birthday I thought I would treat myself to lift the gloom. I was surprised by the level of improvement this passive device produced and it was a keeper. There was instantly a very noticeable extra degree of clarity, especially in the bass. As the Eno included a short length of high quality ethernet cable connecting it to the streamer, the DH Labs cable previously performing this function became the connection from the router to the first switch.
The final piece in the jigsaw came over a year ago with the acquisition of the Sonore OpticalRendu, an optical connection at the end of the chain being more noise resistant than ethernet. The second Cisco switch has an optical port which accommodates it, negating the need for the expensive module. The improvement was worthwhile and even more so in the second system where the MicroRendu now resides.
I have discovered that quality power supplies are not only important where amplifiers are concerned, they are of very noticeable benefit in the digital chain. The PS supplied by Chord are not the best and the performance of both the Mscaler and Qutest have been lifted by Sboosters, especially bass clout. I also found the Sbooster to be an improvement over the MCRU powering the streamer. I have read contrasting reports about the benefits a LPS has when powering a router. In my system with all the filtering, not least the Eno and OpticalRendu, I feel the effect would be negligible.
I have come a long way in eight years and am part of the mass market streaming revolution whilst remaining what is labelled an audiophile.
It has been a voyage of discovery and I have learnt that upscaling, filtering and clean power make significant contributions to the end result. Things were so much simpler in my Luddite CD days. 
