spend on the streamer or on the DAC ?

@deep_333 

laughed out loud reading your post

audiophools are not born, they are made... 

this is the land of $20,000 power cables after all... there was adam, there was then eve, there was then the audiophool

I'm just getting into streaming so after ditching the throw way interconnects and hooking up my Node2i with an Audience Cable, I am quite impressed. My next move will be to have an ethernet cable strung to my listening room and I've ordered some optical cables so I can feed the Bluesound stream into my Gugnier DAC thinking the Gugnier must be better Schiit than the Bluesound DAC, but keeping an open mind and will listen for results. There is only one Coax input on the DAC which is occupied with my CD transport so I am hoping for better results from than I've had in the past with optical cables. I might just be prejudiced but I have the feeling it's going to be a "fail" and I'll be back to using the RCA outs from the Node 2i into my amp. Not been impressed with glass cables in the past. I wish the Gugnier had two COAX inputs. 

There's always MSB for about $20k with power supply. 

There's always MSB for about $20k with power supply. 

I just recently switched from an oppo bdp 103 as a streamer to a Node 2i. Both feeding an Emm Labs dcc2 SE. One thing that is absolutely obvious in my case is how much better both streamers sound when the Emm Labs handles the processing (including clock). Direct from the source the oppo outclasses the node by a good bit. I have found the node significantly lacking as a stand-alone unit. When they both feed the Emm Labs their differences are much less discernible. As transports go they are kind of lateral comparisons. 
From my experience if you get yourself a high performing DAC the quality of the sound will scale with your transport upgrade. This might not be the case the other way around. I think a great transport will be more limited by a bad DAC than a great DAC being limited by a bad transport. 
As far as digital is concerned I am strongly of the opinion that the DAC and clock are the most important factors.