How are most audiophiles going from streamers to DACS

Living on a limited budget.  Running a Bluesound Node 2i , Audioquest cables to a Shiit Byfrost, , sounds good but not close to the CD sound of the innous mini mk III. Running UDP on direct Ethernet. The details for symbol decay, ring, instruments blending. Bass is good on streaming but not as solid and controlled as the Innous.  I can live with the streamer because overall it would cost at least twice as much to get some improvement. I love the simplicity and functionality of the Blu OS. I just sit back and enjoy the music. I am very happy it sounds so good for the cost and being thankful for what I have.

Newbie question, looking to purchase a high resolution streamer.  What I don’t understand is people hooking coaxial digital or optical to their receiver.  I thought optical and coaxial didn’t have the full resolution that hdmi has for the new formats.  If you’re using a high quality streamer, even with a decent receiver, shouldn’t you use the the RCA out to take advantage of the DAC from the streamer?

Thanks! 

Typically optical is of poor quality. SP/DIF (RCA) or AES will have full resolution. Music streamers normally will not have HDMI outputs, those are for home theaters.

A streamer can have a DAC with it. Normally if you talk about a streamer it wound be assumed not to have a DAC. But there are all sorts of combined units. If the unit is a streamer and DAC, then there is likely single digital output for connection to an external DAC and dual RCA analog (and maybe dual XLR) outputs for connection to a preamp.