For those that have separate Streamers & DACS

Started with Bluesound, moved to Lumin D2. Currently using the Lumin U1 mini with Exasound DAC. Moving to the Lumin T2 all in one solution. Best sounding streamer/DAC I’ve ever heard in my system. Don’t let anyone tell you a Bluesound is good enough for a streamer. It simply isn’t true. I’ve done the upgrade journey and a Bluesound doesn’t even come close to what these high end streamers are doing.

Another vote for Innuos Zenith Mark III. Simple, solid, easy to use w/ their iPad app, rips CD’s quickly & most importantly, sounds excellent! Sounds very close to my very good Basis turntable, Vector arm & Hana cartridge set up !

I started streaming with the entry level Naim, then to dCS Bartok, then a Vivaldi short stack, and onto my current and favorite of the bunch a Grimm MU1, feeding a Lampizator Pacific DAC. The Naim was fun to listen too, but not as resolving as I wanted, and while I always got the software to working it was glitchy.  The dCS products were built wonderfully and the software is rock solid, but the sound was analytical and not very engaging.  (I expect dCS has addressed this shortcoming with their new APEX DAC). Finally the Grimm MU1 is resolving and very musical. I have stopped looking at digital sources for now. My Grimm Dealer provided an in home two week demo at no charge, just return postage. There was no question after 15 minutes that the Grimm MU1 sounded better to me, in my room, with my other components than the Vivaldi Upsampler/clock/DAC. 

@verdantaudio +1 Server/streamers you mentioned are indeed the cream of the crop, add Wadax to list. These designers/engineers understand highest quality rendering, minimize noise and maximally diminish jitter. Far too many lose full potential of nice dacs with mediocre rendering.

I always get the feeling many here don't get the difference between servers and streamers. Servers per se don't do rendering, its the rendering capability built into many servers that is actually the streamer, many companies call these servers, really kind of misnomer, I'd call them server/streamers. Many have found internal streamers within these servers lacking, thus, the external streamers becoming more ubiquitous. Prior to this burgeoning streamer market, various usb or other filters were seen as solutions for the rather mediocre rendering within these servers, over time we've seen the streamers taking over, the full rendering capabilities are certainly superior to both filters and internal rendering.

I still don't get it with all the recommendations for some of these servers/streamers with lame internal rendering. Why spend that kind of money for what many relegate to server only duty. Most have relatively low processing capability, forget about running any good dsp, and slows down music software processing, thus, spending more time within noisy environment. They also require a switch of some kind to integrate external streamer, more complexity means increased risk of mismatched clocks and/or RFI entrances. I could also add duplication of services, why pay multiple times for duplication of services, I could make good financial case for Taiko Extreme, Wadax, Pink Faun, Antipodes K50, custom atx build, or any custom build vs. these servers combined with all the add ons. Get the top line server/streamer, connect directly to dac, decrease complexity with top flight rendering, what's not to like!

If this route not financially attainable, build a diy server with dual ethernet ports, use as server only, spend the bigger bucks on nice external steamer, stay fairly simple (server>streamer>dac), with relatively high sound quality at sane money. If one can't diy, plenty of guys out there doing custom builds, some at pennies on the dollar of the commercial builds.