Here is my recent experience:
In the past few days I noticed dropouts when streaming. This was never the case. At first I assumed that it was due to internet speed. But a speedtest showed that this was not the case. It was not WiFi either since I had Ethernet connection.
After some head scratching I remembered that a technician had added an extra switch to my home network in the past week. Then I realized that he had changed the data flow.
Initially, the flow was:
Street cable->router->switch->component
The technician had changed it to:
Street cable->router->switch->switch->component
Notice that the signal now went through two switches intead of one. The second switch is on another floor. Had I not used an Ethernet cable of different color to connect to the upstairs switch it would have been very difficult to find what the problem was.
Anyway, changing the flow to the original set up fixed the issue.
So... my experience leads to believe that your problem could be related to the switch that you are using. If connecting your component directly to the router fixes your problem, there is your answer. I personally have not noticed sound changes when using cat 5e or cat 6 Ethernet cables.
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