If I was you I’d buy a Bluesound Node 2i. That would sound tremendously on your tube integrated. It costs half of your budget, so you can take your wife to a nice dinner and show her that Audio isn’t all that bad :-) If you’re still missing “something” you can add a nice DAC eventually (Chord Qutest, Mytek or RME-ADI 2) and you won’t get any better SQ wise.
Best DAC/Streamer for low quality music formats Mp3,Youtube,etc
Hi Gang. Looking into get into separates in the near future and with the vast assortment of high quality streamers available I'm trying to determine which ones could "potentially" make the best of lossy mp3 files. Majority will be 320 KPS. Sometimes lower. A lot of the music I listen to isn't available in better quality formats and some are even 256 or 192. Hell some of it is YouTube lol. I know this isn't ideal. Just curious what streamers/dacs are generally considered best for not bringing out the worst with these formats. Budget is between 1,000-3,000. Willing to go higher if necessary. That being said I listen to music in higher quality formats when available so I need something that would be able to perform well with both ends of the spectrum. For my new system I'm either going to go with a tube intergraded that would compliment my turntable and the speakers I want (Klipsch heresy or forte) or something more comprehensive that would already include a dac/streamer that fits my requirements. Have a large mp3 collection and stream from both Tidal Hi-FI and Spotify. Will sometimes use YouTube as a music source too when sampling albums.