Looking for advice

I had an old Naim 3.5 CD player with flat cap power supply.  It stopped working and is thrashed.  

I think your Zen Mini strategy makes a lot of sense, especially if you have to do this in stages.  There’s a Darko review from a couple years back where I think he compares the Zen Mini to the Node (both older models I think) and I believe he preferred the Zen Mini.  In any event, I’d take the Zen Mini over the Vault as it’s likely a better streamer, and the Innuos Sense software is apparently one of the better sounding out there.  FWIW. 

i would suggest buy the best Dac you can afford, many devices can be used to stream until you have the additional money to then buy a streamer that is sonicly compatible witht he dac producing  the sound you are after. in the digital world in my opinion the dac is the core piece.

I agree get the best DAC you can afford. The Zen Mini is a okay but the DAC is not very good. Fine for ripping and streaming. 

I have a Bluesound Node 2i going onto an AudioGd NFS-1 DAC and Audiolab 6000CDT transport.  I was strongly considering a Cambridge Audio transport since I previously had the Azur 840C CD player but the reviews on the Audiolab seemed better.  Very happy with this setup although I find myself not listening to cds all that much ever since I got rid of the jewel cases and put them into notebooks.