Fairly new to streaming. Where to start?

@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. 

@wsitsw

All I use now is the streamer and a LUMIN server that has ripped FLAC files on it.

I believe one of my problems is the terminology. Please define streamer and server as used in the sentence?

FWIW I will only be playing files from my Hard Drive. I will be using no streaming services ie Qobuz. Yet I have been referring to the playing my Flac files from the hard drive as "Streaming" them. IOW the whole process is streaming (I thought) But I think that must not be how everyone else is using the term "streaming"

The Vault is a steamer/ server it has software that connects to a  network and allows you pass the music on to your dac or preamp and also holds and manages the physical media on a hard drive. A streamer like the Node2i does the first part but doesn't hold the physical media but connects to a server that does. A server is basically something that holds data on physical media and allows devices to access it. Could be as simple as a NAS or your computer to a complete " farm " of hardware. Servers will typically run software to manage the data and the interfaces. These devices that have internal hard drives are really both a server and streamer and could also have the dac. If that isn't complicated enough some streamers will allow you to connect a thumb drive or hard drive by USB directly and play from that.