Indeed. It is the obsession with the exact mechanism by which those bits get from A to B that mystifies me. Surely, fundamentally it is one of the most boring subjects ever!What Blum repeated for added emphasis , as this needed to be done
Audio is a low-bit application in this world where 10 GB Ethernet is commonplace. We need to keep this in mind. I am seeing Ethernet INterfaces making in-road in Audio (Pro Audio anyway with Ravenna and Dante) I like the idea, Iwoudl like to se more Ethernet DACs in our rank, much easier to interface. An Ethernet switch to drop on the network and send the signal anywhere you want with no fuss... Sound becomes even better (ot the bits more perfect ) if you use one of these Audioquest cables and if you have to ask for the price ...
Unidirectional links are less good than bidirectional links because they, undeniably, introduce an 'analogue' element into the system (theoretical rather than audible). But for home audio we don't have to use them.
If a bidirectional link has error correction and retries, then fine. If those facilities have been "turned off" for reasons which are now no longer relevant, then some standards committee somewhere should be looking into turning them back on. But if the link can't have those facilities, then all we need to do is ensure that there are no electrical problems corrupting the bits being transmitted, just as we would expect no errors in an S/PDIF link, or a track between chips on a PCB.