Add External DAC or Upgrade to a New Streamer / DAC?

A better dac will get you better sound than getting a better streamer. Keep your streamer in a different room and don’t use usb. This will boil down your options

good to see you back and contributing once again @soix 

So even the Auralic all in one streamer/dac sounds good, but maybe even separate dac there would sound even better. I don’t know, anyone know about that?

op

My question is this. In order to achieve a marked improvement in digital sound quality (and being that I enjoy the look and interface of the Rose) is there an external DAC you would recommend running the Rose through (as cost effective as possible - pre-owned or demo preferred) or is there a Streamer / Dac combo product that would be the smarter upgrade move.

HiFi Rose RS250 (Quobuz - Roon - Ethernet - HiFiRose) which is fed into a PrimaLuna Evo 400 Integrated into GoldenEar Triton One.Rs Cardas and Wireworld interconnects and cables.

you would need to describe in some useful detail the nature of sonic improvement you hope to gain from the move you are asking about... your system has a number of arguably positive synergistic pieces in place... sharp sounding front end into a mellow-ish tube amp, into fairly well balanced speakers... so where you want to go with the sound?

there are several variables... one would be to remove the cardas cable and gain more transparency and apparent treble detail... another would be to go to a solid state amplifier to gain slam and cleaner attack in how livelier types of music would play

as usual the more info you provide, the better chance you will get useful, targeted advice on changing equipment cost effectively

I think that you could do either and I was definitely in the camp of just purchasing a new dac when I was ready to upgrade my music streaming. I talked to several people and salespeople when shopping and the hands down recommendation was that a streamer should have its own dac. I ultimately went this route and I’m now thankful that I did. I think I got superior performance in all areas and have a unit where I can also use its upgraded dac. Some streamers don’t allow you to use its dac so if that’s important to you look for one that does. Just a a side note my short list were Innuos, Lumin, and Esoteric, all fine components. I ultimately went with the Esoteric and I’m so glad that I did! Good luck.