For those that have separate Streamers & DACS

put a decent 12v lps into the zs and it takes another meaningful step up in sq - for the $ just crazy crazy good... people over-use the term ’giant killer’ but i think it can apply here... or at least ’giant-matcher’...

note: my use is in roon-mode, with cleansed ethernet feed into the z-s, with sotm 12v lps - i won’t purport to say it beats much more expensive ones in other modes

@jjss49 Thank you for the advice, I’ll add the LPS to my upgrade plan. FWIW, my Roon Core is a SonicTransporter i5, which appears to also be a candidate for an LPS.

looks like this moderator doesn't like me commenting on audio Troy trying to push his stuff on here, this section is for comments about different subjects it's not for selling items there's a total different area of audiogon where you can do that, I guess audio Troy must be paying off the moderators cuz I haven't said anything wrong or violated any rules.

And then the question becomes what is more important....the DAC or Server.  This topic has been discussed many times on Audiogon.  I had Lumin X-1 which is a DAC / Streamer tied to a Synology NAS.  I now have a Lampizator Pacific with a Lucas Audio Music Server.  In my case, the Lampi Pacific did not lite up until I added the Lucas Audio LDMS.  I absolutely love the sound improvements provided by the LDMS.  Lucas Domansky is a computer genius and his customer service is 24/7.  I live in Arizona and he set up my LDMS including loading 7 tbs of music on the server remotely from the UK.  The SQ compared to my past systems is incredible.  

@cleeds  Only saying streaming dac CAN be good choice.

I do like the NUC servers, if only they had two network ports. There are some builders out there supplying various atx motherboard builds with customer requested options such as optical ports, optimized rendering ports a la usb, spdif. two ethernet ports with all of them. Also choice of Linux, Windows OS. Costs all over the place depending on build. Biggest issue with any atx build is power supply, atx boards require multiple voltages, big money for the good lps, probably reason for rare off the shelf examples. 

Extremely experienced streamers at audiophilestyle.com using either diy or contracted custom builds based on atx boards; or servers in Taiko Extreme, Pink Faun echelon. Ultimately, I believe in going the ultimate server/streamer route, no external streamer necessary. The all in one unit will have been optimally integrated with clocks and power supplies, result, likely less noise and jitter than mixing and matching various components from different manufacturers.

The all in one unit will have been optimally integrated with clocks and power supplies, result, likely less noise and jitter than mixing and matching various components from different manufacturers.

i think this is an important advantage of combined units... the interface can be managed using two separate units, clocking, cabling etc but a well engineered single unit would lock in a high quality solution