I am currently trying to make this decision myself about whether I should go the route of a Uniti Atom or similar DAC+Streamer in one. However I've learned from past experience that when it comes to hardware/software solutions manufacturers have a bad habit of making their products obsolete after 2 or 3 years effectively barring you from upgrading your streamer. The same happens to that Apple iPhone you had that was perfect when you got it but after 2 years its slow and almost unusable.
Lets face it, the streaming world is on fire and there is already an explosion of features and new methods to exploit this technology. I expect that trend to accelerate with MQA. Right now I'm focused on finding a great quality DAC that is Roon Ready and then using a separate streamer that I can at least resell when upgrades for it either cease or something entirely new comes along. Roon servers are currently the ones I'm most interested in as they give the most control over commodity hardware from Intel that will simply get faster and cheaper over time. Ultimately a Roon streamer *should* get cheaper and cheaper vs an all in one where you are stuck with whatever the last update includes.
I'll say that I am a software developer so technically its a simple exercise to setup a roon streamer and this may not be feasible for others.
Lets face it, the streaming world is on fire and there is already an explosion of features and new methods to exploit this technology. I expect that trend to accelerate with MQA. Right now I'm focused on finding a great quality DAC that is Roon Ready and then using a separate streamer that I can at least resell when upgrades for it either cease or something entirely new comes along. Roon servers are currently the ones I'm most interested in as they give the most control over commodity hardware from Intel that will simply get faster and cheaper over time. Ultimately a Roon streamer *should* get cheaper and cheaper vs an all in one where you are stuck with whatever the last update includes.
I'll say that I am a software developer so technically its a simple exercise to setup a roon streamer and this may not be feasible for others.