Best Music Streamer to pair with Rogue Audio monoblocks and Pre-Amp

All streamers have no sound = Head in the sand.

poor advice, and the words of someone with little/no experience comparing streamers and/or has a system or ears incapable of revealing the differences.

Or maybe someone who has spent a lot of time with streaming tech, has a good system with lots of options, and a good ear.

Soix is probably right when he says the majority agree with him, but this is a self selecting group.  Wouldn’t it be a pretty useless community if everyone had to agree on everything?  No need to throw insults to those with their own opinions.

I’d rather sit with Alvin then Amir for sure!

Or maybe someone who has spent a lot of time with streaming tech, has a good system with lots of options, and a good ear.

Soix is probably right when he says the majority agree with him, but this is a self selecting group.

@jji666  Yup, a self-selecting group that use their ears.  Spending time with streaming tech is not the same as actually listening.  What streamers have you actually compared in your system?  I started streaming with an iPad and have had both the iFi Zen Stream and Innuos Zenith Mk3 in my system and the differences were patently obvious between all three — not even close, which is why saying all streamers sound the same is just ludicrous to me.  If you’ve tried better streamers and hear no difference then fine — sad, but fine — but just basing your argument on theory and tech experience is weak and not fully informed and won’t hold much weight here.  There’s a reason so many here have heard meaningful differences and have upgraded to better streamers, and it ain’t because all streamers have no sound or because they’re fooling themselves.

I have used mac mini with Roon, Auralic Aries G1 and Lumin U1 Mini with both native software and Roon as well as Tidal Connect, Bricasti M3 DAC internal network card as Roon endpoint and with Mconnect, and am currently using Aurender N200 streamer with both the native Conductor and as a Roon Endpoint. Not only do the streamers sound different, using the native processing on Auralic and Aurender sounds slightly better than Roon. Tidal connect and Mconnect sound slightly harsher/more “digital” to me than either Lumin native app or Roon.

I agree streamers don’t have a sound unless you drop them on the floor or hit them with a hammer. They sit there quietly and process the incoming data stream.

To understand why streamers or even the native processing vs. Roon sound different you need to spend some time reading, researching and understanding different designs and why a certain design decision was made, as well what in the streamer design and implementation influences sound quality. How certain designs are optimized for USB and others are optimized for SPDIF and what makes a difference between USB and SPDIF.
No one here owes anyone any explanation. Do your own ground work. And when ready, once your system reaches a certain level, you may want to compare few different streamers to hear it for yourself.
Saying a component in a signal chain doesn’t influence sound of your system is just not a good look.