Do I Need a Dedicated Streamer?

I appreciate all of the responses. Now that it is clear that I do in fact need a streamer to take really complete my system. I am curious if there is a numerical percentage that could be attached to the level of improvement I would experience if I were to go from Airplay to a dedicated device such as a Lumin D2?

I am still a bit of a novice when it comes to all of the streaming platforms but will venture out and give the others such as Roon a try. I hope to report back in a few months with a solid conclusion on my findings and an awesome streamer to boot!

Give Roon a try first. Install Roon Core on your mac mini and link to Qobuz or Tidal from it. Then use your Hegel as Roon end point. It will be an improvement over airplay with more coherent and clear presentation.
Then if you want to try a streamer, Lumin U series (pure streamers) is a good starting point. The D2 is a streamer/DAC combo by the way. Lumin is Roon ready and you’ll be able to use it as a Roon end point or use its UI which unfortunately is pretty clunky. All this is easy to set up. 
The real improvement and a big step up will be when you use a streamer connected to an outboard DAC. Your Hegel built in DAC is decent enough to start with though. It’s fun to explore. Huge potential there depending on how much you’re willing to spend. Enjoy the journey!

Not sure if installing roon is going to be of value for the sound quality unless you use some of the dsp included as part of Roon, which I don’t find very appealing. I think the overlay of this on top of qobuz maybe on the neutral side.

Streaming direct from tidal or qobuz is just as good or maybe even better. Also the lumin Interface is quite good as far as sound is concerned, although the Interface itself is horrifying to use and requires a bit of a learning curve, and roon is so much better and easier to deal with.

The lumin ap I'm not sure you knew this but was designed by monkeys. I just wish they would've spent more time and considered human involvement when using it because I think it has promise due to sound quality being a little bit better than roon.

I am very excited to try the Volumio Rivo this holiday, unfortunately it has gotten stuck in customs, so I have to be patient, I want to try it as I use Roon and the Rivo is said to sound great with Roon, my dac is a Primare Dac30.

Lumin is a excellent quality streamer and will improve your sound quality significantly depending on your system… DAC, preamp, amp, speakers and venue.

Roon is search and recommendation software and at best will not reduce the sound quality of your system.