First Streamer...

More important than a streamer is a DAC. 

Although I completely agree a DAC is crucial to getting the most out of streaming, I disagree that it’s more important than a streamer.  With streaming, IME everything is important and additive so if you cheap out somewhere — be it cables, streamer, power supply, etc. your results will suffer.  I’d also highly recommend the iFi Zen Stream with an upgraded power supply as a first step, although go hard wired because its Wi-Fi is not good and their customer support is basically non existent and sad.

@ghasley I agree.  I've heard a couple of very good streamer/dac combos and a couple of good DACs in integrated amps.  However, there are lots of aspects of a DAC to consider and it is likely to be a component that will be upgraded somewhere frequently.  The separate DAC is more convenient to upgrade.

This is a different and much less important concern that what I was talking about above.  Is less expensive combo's the DAC is likely to be much lower quality than the streamer--because a moderate quality DAC is much more expensive to make than a moderate quality streamer.

Jerry

@carlsbad Agreed. One bright spot is that an average dac today is so much better than an average dac of 10-15 years ago. Its a great time to be in the hobby.

I forgot to mention that PS Audio is two months from introducing their $2K AirLens streamer. There are over 2000 post on their AirLens thread. The selling point is that all input and outputs are galvanically isolated and it has I2s out. I2s has been promoted by PS Audio for some time. I’ll be watching reviews. It looks promising. PS Audio has a 30 day no questions asked return window.

I²S, is an electrical serial bus interface standard used for connecting digital audio devices together. It is used to communicate PCM audio data between integrated circuits in an electronic device. Wikipedia

Protocol: Serial

Designed: 1986; 36 years ago

Width: 1 data line (SD) +; 2 clock lines (SCK, WS)

Data signal: Push-Pull