Advice for Streaming Newbies - Best Bang for Our Bucks

If you are after outstanding sound quality then the key is a high quality streamer and high quality DAC. You can take inexpensive equipment and incrementally improve performance, but if you want real performance you want a carefully chosen streamer, DAC, preamp, and amp of roughly the same investment level. 
 

I have owned streaming solutions at the $1K, $2K, $3K, $5K, $10K, $20K, and $50K. If you are serious about sound you start with the best possible components and then add infrastructure enhancements… like an EtherRegen… which I added to my main system.

My advice: buy the best DAC and streamer you can possibly afford and then start thinking about tricks to get a bit more out of them. 

Rose rs250 $2500 or Rose rs150 $5000. They have an internal DAC. You get internet streaming stations from all over the world. The 250 is half the size and half the money and sounds just like the 150. I haven't heard the others mentioned so probably good idea to audition as many as possible.

I like the Rose 150B. It has everything I’d want in a streamer, except I don’t need the DAC (I’d get it anyway because that screen is hard to say no to (outside of all the other benefits).

Can someone explain to me like I’m 5 what the benefits of adding a switch to the Internet router supplied by the service provider can do? Assuming the clocks are good in my streamers (Audiolab 6000N and an NAD M50.2) and are galvanically isolated, what will the switch/router provide?

Also, I’m at the point where I have 3 systems. One uses PlayFi and the other uses BlueOS. I need to buy a 3rd streamer. I like the Aurender stuff, but don’t feel like dropping that much coin just so I can have the same interface. Leaning towards a Node (each system has a separate DAC). Has anyone else run into this problem, or am I an outlier?

Boy oh boy, am I glad I have not gotten infected with the DIGITAL bug. Audiophiles have ALWAYS been pretty crazy dumping truckloads of money down a (perceived) 'making it better' path (they DID sell speaker cable for $100/ft even back then). 

But DIGITAL brings the craze to a whole new level. Reading the 'atom splitting' (hair splitting was a thing of the analog times) discussions, aren't we 'missing the boat', 'barking up the wrong tree', 'not seeing the big picture'?

Granted, my 'listening ear' (i.e. critical skill level to judge performance) is not even close to what it was 40 years when we going down the deep end of audio performance improvements, but even with my current limited skill level, I am convinced that you get 10x the improvement for every Dollar spent on the ANALOG side of the sound chain (for example speaker, room, etc). 

So if 'bang for buck' is in the discussion: think analog improvements first. 

For me the absolutely unsurpassed, blow everything else out of the water streamer is a BlueSound Node.

(Full disclosure: I'm deaf and have to listen to all my music using braille).