Folks, so much good input!! Thank you all! I will look into most of these suggestions.
One point to keep in mind: Bypassing wifi altogether in my situation is not a practical solution. I am pretty much stuck with wifi considering the amount of time, money and effort I am willing to invest in this. I also heard of some issues and mixed results with powerline signal transmission, so, again, I am staying wireless. I have had wireless streaming for years with no signal problems that I am aware of. Of course I don't know what signal quality I'm missing, but my wife and I are quite musically discerning, we also listen to our Thorens/Shure turntable and our Sony ES SACD on the same system, and find our wifi streaming sound with the current streamer and DAC quite good, certainly on par with the CD player.
The quest is for a good wifi router solution with obvious streaming and sound quality benefits in case the current Netgear ends up a brick.