New DAC or New Streamer or New Streamer/DAC

+1 to @jackd  's post.

Srajan Ebaen of 6Moons just re-confirmed (in his review of the New DSP Board for the Terminator) that the Terminator is the [italics / bolded] DAC to beat in the Euro 10K and under price range. It replaced his Aqua Formula DAC (original version). 

Going with the Terminator, or equivalent DAC, allows for tremendous flexibility in streamer/server choice and streamer/server advances (i.e. future proofing), IRRESPECTIVE of the superior performance this route also offers.

I agree with @stewart0722 in regards to his experience with N10. I have owned N10 for 5 plus years and there isn’t another server like N10 under $10K.

A few years ago I demo’d the Auralic Aries, Lumin, and a Aurender and I bought the Aries. I also think the Aurender SSD caching area is a gimmick. The Auralic Lightning DS GUI interface was far superior to the the others. But, I used the Lumin software in the beginning because I like the SQ better than the lightning software.
I got rid of all of the crap and went with Roon and a dac with a network card to bypass the inferior USB connection. Now, my server is in a different room and my dac is a Roon network endpoint.
BTW, I have 5 other rooms in my house that I use network servers as Roon endpoints to streamer different music from my 1 Roon server, which is not the Nucleus

I faced a similar decision last week and decided to purchase a Roon Nucleus (primarily for the Roon user interface), a Lumin U1, and a PS Audio DirectStream DAC. Now I’m (im)patiently waiting for FedEx to deliver the goods!

Depends on your budget of course, but at a similar price point to the Terminator, I can highly recommend Primaluna’s brand new EVO 100 DAC.

I took the plunge, and straight out of the box, it is a H U G E improvement over a modded Lampizator Amber 2, which is/was no slouch.

It compares favorably to DAC’s three times it’s intro price.

https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/primaluna-evo-100-tube-dac/