What are you streaming tonight?

@ghjuvanni I agree with going with personal experience.  Mine has been different than yours. 

So in effect, you're saying that the input into the DAC makes no difference whatsoever - a computer, a Raspberry Pi, a high-end standalone streamer, ethernet, USB, coax, BNC, optical, I2S, etc. other than the bit rates they are capable of transmitting.

@reubent The Bluesound is a good "frugal" starting point if you're more concerned with ease of use, affordability, and versatility than ultimate sound quality.  It has a great app and does just about every music service and music format.

Bluesound’s (DAC) sound is OK, but underwhelming. That’s why I no longer use it’s internal DAC. External-DAC-wise I think we are at a point where it is difficult to improve things any more (although marketing will try to convince people otherwise). Which is great -- we can concentrate on music itself and stop obsessing about equipment :-)

Greg,

I've been "getting by" with streaming Spotify via a bluetooth connection. So, I'm obviously not obsessed with ultimate Sound Quality :~)

I am concerned about ease of use, supported services (Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, local rips and Internet Radio). Connectivity is also a concern. I would prefer to use wireless (I have excellent wi-fi coverage and speed) but I can connect via ethernet from the mesh node that is located right by my audio rig.

I may even go with a Vault 2i so I can rip some of my CD collection to HDD. But who knows? I've been talking about this for 2 years now, and just now got around to subscribing to Tidal (first step).

Thanks for your feedback guys.......

@reubent I have ripped all of my CDs, about 2,000 of them, and stored the FLAC files on a 2 TB WD Passport external drive and connected (USB) to the Node 2i. That way I stream from the internet or get the FLACs from the attached disk. Same quality given that the recording is the same. Sometimes Qobuz has remasters of my old CDs, though. I have used Node 2i over 5 GHz WiFi or ethernet cable w/ equal success.