All Benchmark System Question

Definitely start with the source then. See if you can borrow one of the less expensive Aurender Streamers. The difference will be jaw dropping. Also try Qobuz streaming service… free for a month. I started digital streaming about 15 years ago… incrementally upgrading all components piece by piece from an iPod on both my headphone system and main system. I held off the longest on getting a dedicated streamer… it’s only spitting out bits, right? Wrong… it is the source… everything that follows is completely dependent and contingent on it. It is the key source like in an analog system… the TT, then phono stage, then preamp… etc. they all matter, but a noisy poor start equals highly amplified carefully crafted poor sounding stuff. I recommending at least as much as any other component. My streamer is about 20% more than most of the other components in my system components and well worth it! I got there incrementally so know the intermediate steps.

My digital end is now very comparable to my high end analog end.

These streamer suggestions are great. I had a great improvement in my sound when I went with a Ubiquiti network switch ($200) and fibre optic cable directly from that to my Sonore OpticalRendu. Then from there USB to my DAC.  

When I first heard this setup I was amazed at how much an improvement over my 5 year old Sonore microRendu. I actually bought a second "OpticalRendu for ROON Only" ($999) for my AudioMirror DAC. My streaming quest is now done.

I have a noisy network with my music server on a cheap computer far away in another room. That room is setup on my home network by a PowerLine subnet. So nothing anyone would say is noiseless. However, when the bits get to that last mile before the DAC I believe the fibre kills the noise. Otherwise, my setup should sound awful.

I am going to buy the AudiByte VOX | ZAP DAC next week. It has built-in streaming that is supposed to be advanced (on the not yet available HUB module). It will be interesting to compare the OpticalRendu with the built-in network streaming on the AudiByte.

If the source is bad then on the BM stack the sound is bad.

So what I am hearing is that I can make an immediate improvement by switching out the Node 2i for another streamer (Aurender, Lumin). I think I can get ahold of some of them from Music Direct, Audio Advisor, etc for a trial. Here is a question though. I am currently streaming to the Node 2i connected to DAC 3B via coax connection. Node is connected via ethernet to router/modem. I am streaming Quobuz through wi-fi from my iphone to the Node 2i. Am I losing anything by doing that? Do I need to connect the phone or tablet via cable to the streamer? Kind of hard if I am moving around the apartment a lot and want to change music.
I am anxious to hear how the Audiobyte works out.

You connect your streamer directly to your network, either by eternet cable or buy a wifi extender. You plug the extender next to your equipment and plug a short Ethernet cable into that. You can get a little extender that plugs into the wall like a wall wart. Then you use an app on your iPhone, or preferably iPad to control the streamer. I works incredibly well. Aurender has a great app that shows all your music… Qobuz, any you place on the streamer storage, and any that happens to be on your network storage. It does an amazing job of integrating all the music you have access to. It will cashe it so it can help make up for any short network latency. The better the streamer the more it makes up for network issues.

@regg the Aurrender does not support ROON (if that is important to you).

I had the pretty cool ROON READY Matrix Audio Mini-I 3 Pro DAC in the house for about 6 months ($899). I sent it off to my buddy who does not want to struggle with streaming. It has a lot of streaming choices.

I tried 3 of them and compared.

- built-in network streaming using Ethernet
- my old Sonore microRendu via USB
- built-in WiFi on the DAC

The first 2 wired setups sounded a bit better and was infinitely more reliable. On Wifi I would have music playing for a few hours then all of a sudden the music got all scrambled and I had to restart the DAC. There are some posts on streaming threads that give some arguments as to why WiFi is bad for streaming. The only company that I know that advocates for WiFi is the well regarded Auralic.