Curious to know your streaming and dac set up and the best recommended streamer under $15k


Curious to know your streaming and dac set up as well your best recommended streamer. I have recently upgraded my dac and have used 2 different set ups in an attempt to find the my best combination.  Former set up was Roon Nucleus+ connected to a Lumin T2. New set up is a new Nagra Tube Dac and a separate Power Supply and I had that directly connected to my Roon via Shunyata Sigma USB cable and using a Shunyata Ethernet connection to my network. Didn’t feel like that was my best possible sound so introduced the Lumin T2 back into the fold as my streamer and then connected the Nagra to the Lumin T2. This was a much improved sound. At this early testing point I’m curious to see if anyone uses and/or recommends a streamer that has significantly improved their sound under $15k. I would like to stay with the Roon platform. 
 

Current set up is Audio Research Ref160S amp, Audio Research Ref6SE pre-amp with Wilson Alexia speakers.  All cabling between these components is Transparent Reference. 
 

Unfortunately, I have not had time to photograph and upload my new Nagra dac. 
 

I really appreciate anyone who takes time to assist with some thoughtful ideas, experiences, or recommendations. 

woots

@designsfx i think I will look into Lumin options. Liked the suggestion of the U1x. Also, liked options shown on analog audio. They showed some items with great specs.  Most of music has been ripped or comes from Hi Res files. Tomorrow will have to be a day of digesting all but 1 good idea. 

was able to A/B test the MSB with the Lumin X1 for a couple of weeks and found the MSB to be more analog sounding than the Lumin X1.

This what I also posted about the X1 vs the Musetec 005. Though for my ears the X1 is slightly favored over the tiny bit warmer and smoother 005.

 

Here is another use for ROON if you are a headphone listener.

Store - Accurate Sound

Those Headphone FilterSets are Convolution filters that can be run on ROON. I used to use the RAAL SR1a Convolution filter with my Benchmark DAC3B and LA4 preamp. It was an awful combo without the filter. Strangely enough, I now use the DAC3B and fibre streaming, with my RAAL tube VM-1a headphone amp (no LA4 needed), without any convolution filters. This is the best sound I have in my house.

 

@woots

Hi. Source in my experience is everything. Meaning dedicated line, followed by my best cable from wall to a q base or conditioner or whatever you like. So I spent more on the devices from the ethernet port, to and SOTM switch powered by a great power supply then using a great cable to my streamer. Yes I bought an Atlantis Wadax demo streamer from a dealer and used it was 16.5k but man oh man you could put a decent DAC (i have tried super simple to very good) and it all sounds great. Just sayin, the source the source, don’t get cheap on that part. Just my 2 cents. Of course I just listened to my friends system with the Wadax reference streamer 60k and Wadax reference dac 180k and well yeah, that crap  was pure music. Nothing digital there. I think you could find an atlantis streamer used maybe, not a lot on the market, but Wadax is the crap.