Fairly new to streaming. Where to start?

@bruce19

Have you a//b the Yamaha against the 2i? I’m just curious. The audio shop here in town sells & uses one to demo their speakers (Watkins Gen 4). The music sounds great. He’s been trying to sell me one.

Then too, I've read that all streamers are not equal in their ability to hand over the 1's & 0's over to the dac. I don't know if this is correct though.

I think you would be surprised by how nice the Bluesound Node 2i sounds.  I stream Tidal and I find MQA to have a noticeable difference in sound stage and presence.  The dealer talked me into adding a ProJect S2 DAC to the Bluesound connected with an Audioquest Carbon COAX cable.  However, I preferred the Bluesound by itself.  When you add a DAC, you can only get one unfold of MQA.  Again, I liked MQA better than adding a DAC.  I had to sell the DAC and Coax for half of what I paid. I wonder if you can hear a significant difference in sound quality after purchasing a $3,000 streamer?  The dealer I purchased my REL subwoofers recommended I go with a BelCanto Streamer for three times the cost.  Problem is finding a dealer who will allow you to take both home to try on your home system for 24 hours.  I think most would be reluctant because they don't want you to know how good the Bluesound sounds like for the money.  Everyone in this group does not like MQA and I wonder why I do?  I guess if you spend more, it just must sound better.

Forgot to mention.  Hard wire CAT6.  Eliminates wireless streaming issues.  However, depends how far source is from you system.

@larry5729



Thanks. If I go with the vault I'll have to hard wire it since it doesn't do wireless. My router is about 50 feet from the stereo. So, I'm go into have to run a wire under the house OR get a Wifi range extender. been doing some reading on them today. I would like to bring my router closer to the central part of the house. I have a good router only a few years old. It does ac wireless. 

@artemus_5 I actually just recently helped someone with this same question.

My advice is to consider the DAC first, because that's going to have the biggest influence on the sound character and maybe you'll like how the DAC in a network streaming DAC sounds, but maybe you won't like it as much as some other standalone DAC.

Likewise, the software and convenience of the network streamer will play a big part in how much you enjoy listening to music. You will also want to consider whether or not you need support for services like Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify, etc.

If you end up liking the DAC in a network streaming DAC, and you like the software and hardware of the same network streaming DAC, you're good to go. But otherwise separate units gives you more flexibility as I think you've also concluded.

Some other brands you may want to consider are Lumin, Bryston, Trinnov, and Devialet.