Fairly new to streaming. Where to start?

The current school of thought is that ssd should be better than hdd but....
Whether any of us mere mortals could hear that difference is another question entirely.
Guess I am spoiled though as my N100 uses a small ssd to cache the music from the hdd so I have best of both worlds.

The bluesound products, vault, vault2, vault2i all use a hdd although.....
if you were really concerned over the ssd vs hdd you can attach a local usb drive to the vault and it will read it just like a NAS. This then could be a ssd so you have options with the vault variants for sure.

@uberwaltz


I got this idea from Aurender CEO in a interview. He does not let hdd do the playing. OK for storage, but hdd hands off to SSiD for play. Thus the question as to whether the vault has ssid and therefore a better player?

https://www.audiostream.com/content/tips-setting-audiophile-nas-system-aurender-john-paul-lizars

At this point I’ve spent too much time reading and digesting. I have just enough knowledge to be dangerous...(-: ...and I’m wound tight on these steroids (for my back). One more day left


@big_greg.   

I hear ya. I overthink things. Maybe after I can get off this hunt I'll get centered up. Then too, it comes  down to that thought that everything matters. But hey, only one more day of these steroids!!! Yeah

@artemus_5 Perhaps I didn't make my point clear... if you want to get the best sound quality, consider something other than the Bluesound line.  Investing in something with a better DAC will have more of an impact on sound quality than whether the files are stored on a spinning hard drive or a SSD.  Most of my digital listening is through streaming services like Qobuz and Tidal, where files are quite possibly not even on the same continent and unlikely to be stored on SSD in their server farms.  Sound quality is excellent, and more so since I replaced my Bluesound with a better streamer (the TEAC NT-505). 

In other words, it's unlikely to make much difference if the Vault has a spinning hard drive or an SSD.   I doubt it's a SSD, or they wouldn't say "ultra-quiet" 2TB hard-drive.

Definitely a HDD in the vault variants.

And yes Artemus that's exactly what I was referring to with my Aurender n100.
It caches the HDD files to it's SSD and then the HDD goes silent.
But as I say, can we really hear that difference?
As Greg rightly says Qobuz hires streaming sounds spectacular and that certainly is not on a local SSD so......

@lalitk

Not 10K. Two excellent sreramers I already mentioned are half that and all that. 

4.5K for a LUMIN T2 with a built in DAC (4.8K with added Sboooster external power supply) or the  PS audio DirectStream DAC on sale this month for 4.8K. 

artemus_5
No need for a stand alone DAC with these streamers unless a CD player is used and you want to filter that too. If you never wanted to pass the CD signal into a DAC then ok. 

All I use now is the streamer and a LUMIN server that has ripped FLAC files on it. A true KISS setup.  About 1/3 of all files are ultra high res. Oh man. Wow. 

Ironically “Speak no Evil” by Wayne Shorter is on now. I use Qobuz. No more pandora. Zilch. 

This stranger on the internet would urge you to rethink your direction. I went from sourced off the computer to the current set up. Let me just say BIG difference. To those who think otherwise I’d say I never knew until hearing for myself what you discount. I’m not talking about ultra expensive stuff.  Would if I could. Dot dot dot.