Fairly new to streaming. Where to start?

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. 

Artemus
To put it simply
I think majority of members here who refer to streaming really mean accessing an online music service over the internet.
Like Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify etc.

Technically you are still " streaming" music from your hard drive to your DAC of choice but it is probably confusing some members just with the terminology.