Does the 'Buck' Start with the DAC?

"rockna stack: wavedream signature se with wavedream net. it's a great combination in my system."

@skanda  Thanks for sharing your findings and results on your Rockna component stack. Hopefully your experience will help others making similar choices. And, of course, looking forward to your impressions once you have the Wavelight / Taiko Extreme in your system.

I'm in agreement on your "laws" perspective. Would love to hear more on that topic, wherever / whenever you choose to share.  : )

Been looking to finally add a dedicated streamer to my set up. I'm starting small with the SotM SMS 200 Neo. 

During my research - there's a massive thread on the new Sonore OpticalModule and quite a bit of feedback noting the improvement of feeding a streamer with fiber (or "cleaning" the ethernet signal). This device along with some power supply upgrades will be my next few purchases. 

Eventually the plan is to work up to 50:50 split between streamer and DAC. 

Does the buck start with the dac ? 
 I’ve never experienced a bigger “all at once jump” in musically performance as I have with a Innuos Zenith 3 and it’s all in one box Phoenix USB regenerator , power supplies and master clock .

Having borrowed a few dacs some beyond my budget like MSB , Chord Dave and Total dacs the all at once leap in musically performance wasn’t near the equal to that of the server and Phoenix component.
Though it’s all important..

Innuos is a great piece of hardware for sure. And PhoenixUSB does help with USB connection. A lot

I’m enjoying this thread.  Interestingly, I posed a related question elsewhere about which might have more impact - server/streamer or DAC.  While I subscribe to the notion that everything makes a difference, I’ve also concluded that, In my experiences, the server/streamer is at least as important and likely the more important determinant of quality sound than the DAC.  

Several users suggest that, because their DACs are known to be relatively immune to jitter, the streamer isn’t particularly important.  I don’t find this to be true.  My DAC also rejects jitter very well, yet the differences in sound between a variety of servers is pretty easy to hear.  So, I might suggest they audition better servers to see if it improves their results - if they’re so included in that pursuit.

My $.02
mgrif