Wanting to upgrade my streaming sound quality.

I think the OP made a good choice in a one box solution. His original dilemma was, not being a digital guy, he needed something simple, but to match the rest of the gear that either meant higher than $2500 budget or going up the learning curve of the less expensive but sonically equivalent way of doing things.

Digital is a different skill set. Kudos to the OP for recognizing that. So many of the "digital is crap" crowd simply don’t know what they don’t know. I love the analog feel too, but sometimes I want iced coffee, sometimes I want hot coffee. Is either really wrong?

I'll also throw in that the Mytek line of products probably would have been a good choice for the OP. The Brooklyn Bridge II has the same DACs as my Liberty II and sounds beautiful, plus that version streams. 

Over the years I've gone back and forth with upgrades to analog and digital in my system.  For me planned upgrades to either side need to outperform the present superior side. I'm presently at point where it will take $10-20K to bring analog up to or surpass digital.

I've always found analog needs to outperform digital side in order to motivate me to use. My digital side has been at least satisfying for years, and the convenience trumps analog. Digital has gotten all the attention in recent years, reason analog needs major expenditure to catch up.

For vinyl only guys just getting into streaming expenditure will depend on how ambitious analog system is. Reaching too low on digital side will result in disappointment, it really takes quite a large expenditure and paying much attention to every single little detail to reach upper echelon of streaming. Streaming at highest level is complex and so many choices!

@sns +1

+1 Axo….good post.

If you want digital to sound as good as your analogue set up then spend close to that amount and don’t limit it to a third of your analogue’s cost.If you want digital to sound as good as your analogue set up then spend close to that amount and don’t limit it to a third of your analogue’s cost.

This is where I am, got nearly same invest in both. Couple things its made me realize. 1)Not sure I want to keep buying vinyl given where retail pricing has gone and storing the media. 2) How crappy many vinyl recordings actually are.

I got 2 issues of the American pressings of the Beatles white album. They both have inferior SQ. Hop over the Qobuz and fire up the 2018 remaster and it sound much better. I searched around for the UK pressing which is supposed to be good. Found one in Canada for $100+ and no telling what its gonna look like when you get it.   Or fork the big $ for the remaster LP. :/ I am thinking of saving my $ and continuing to tweak the streamer config.