Looking for a basic streamer without a DAC, preamp, storage and all that

Hello,
You have to think about resale, ease of use, and down the road functionality. The answer is really Blue Node 2i. I know some already mentioned this but you have to think about the three things I said above. Some streamers are a pain to navigate or hook up. What if your DAC fails for some reason meaning it has to be serviced. You can use the DAC in the Blue Node 2i until it’s fixed or replaced. You decide you want higher end and want to sell it. Everyone knows what Blue Node is. You can add on units or different models of Blue Node to have multi room music system functioning from one app. Last but not least. Black Friday and Cyber Monday are a little over a week away. Wait to see if their is a deal to be had. In October Blue Node gave $100 off the 2i. Maybe they will do this in a week. https://holmaudio.com/bluesound/

Agree on Bluesound Node 2i. I got mine, open box, for $450. I stream it to a better DAC.

I mean, what would you really be looking to save by getting something without the DAC? A couple hundred? The point by @hshifi about resale would take care of that difference if you resell.

I haven't had any problems installing and configuring software for the RPis in my systems, but then I am fairly computer literate. There are a number of places where you can get good instructions. To my mind, probably the hardest thing is choosing which of the many options available that you want to use. I currently use two different ones -- one player uses the HiFiBerry OS with their HAT card and is very simple to set up. The other two player use the PiCorePlayer OS which has more options and thus a bit more complicated. I use PCP on those two RPis because the players have touchscreen displays.

As noted, there are many other options available.

Simplest solution is to use Tidal ready Mconnect app with google audio Chromecast device and if you connect it to your DAC with mini toslink to Toslink cable you’ll get tidal’s MQA signal

Oh... sorry, I just realised that Schiit Bifrost I not MQA ready, so you won’t get MQA decoded signal on its output, but still you could do high res over the network streaming with Chromecast Audio connected via Toslink optical and Mconnect app.. here is link to iTunes video how to do it: https://youtu.be/zkv0_2JAdEA