Solo streamer

Respectfully, I do not understand the posts that suggest the OP won’t know what the Aurender is capable of with his current DAC.  The one thing most agree on with respect to the Benchmark DAC is that it is highly resolving, very transparent.  The most common criticism of it is that it is too analytical.  But regardless of where you stand on that, how can it be that an uber-resolving DAC won’t reveal exactly what a streamer is, or is not, doing?  

@mdalton I defended the Benchmark in an earlier post against those who had belittled it, but got no response.  I agree with what you are saying.

@abnerjack

Yeah, I saw your post and basically agreed.  As you’ve no doubt noticed, I’m a streamer skeptic, but you can’t have it both ways.  You can’t claim that streamers sound different, different tonality even, and then argue that you can’t hear the difference with a revealing DAC.  These two ideas are in violent conflict.  What’s not inconsistent is if somebody thinks a $10k DAC is more “full-bodied”, “refined”, blah, blah blah, but that has nothing to do with the streamer.  DACs sound different. Duh.

@mdalton  You absolutely can't have any audiophile street cred if you don't buy in to the "everything new and more expensive is better"  shtick.  Luckily not all of us accept this spew.  Of course there has to be a base line, entry level.  How far above that one must go is an individual decision.  I think the Bluesound node is an excellent streamer.  I don't feel the need to wear a price tag as a badge of honor.

For the record, my digital setup is :  Bluestream node n130 into Benchmark dac3 hgc, directly into Bryston 4bsst2, and then Magnepan 1.7.  Sometimes I alternate the Herron preamp and the Kef meta ls50 into the mix.  The sound with these variations is outstanding to my ear, but what do I know?  I have recently found a nice pair of used Sennheiser 800, and with the Benchmark dac the sound is remarkable.  I do think the headphone amp in the Benchmark is somewhat lacking and am looking for an upgrade to the Quicksilver tube amp.  I don't feel the need for any further upgrades.  But again what do I know?  

Reminds me of my favorite all time bumper sticker. "You just think you're happy" ( Bloomington, In. 1970).  In this case I just think I'm happy with my sound. 

Last month I did what rvpiano is proposing. Bought a new Aurender N200 and added it to an ~$2k (Ayre Codex) DAC. Glorious sound quality. Haven't streamed Tidal or Qobuz yet. Been playing my files off the internal SSD. Another thread said there wouldn't be any improvement over the Oppo BDP105 and Ayre playing the same files from external hard drive.The Aurender definitely sounds better.

Thanks,

aldnorab