Fairly new to streaming. Where to start?


$2k & under budget

Aralic Vega has streamer  and DAC. May be the easiest start?
Then there is Schiit...Yiggy or Gumby...which streamer?
Ladder NOS dac? Or Chip? I'm old. maybe I'll like the old school DAC?
Then there is  Benchmark DAC 3...I think it has streamer?
Then
Exasound E32
Audio Mirror?
Metrum
MHDT Orchid
Border Patrol?
Musical Paradise?
Whats a newbie to do? I am a classic rock fan with lots of FLAC & M4a files. I like detail & PRaT. Love a good bass line. I also play some 70's jazz. I have a Theta Miles CD player from the 1900's & play a lot of vinyl too. But I need to come into the 21st century.  Besides, I will probably become tired of the vinyl ritual and work at some point as I get older. I think I have done enough homework to be somewhat confused. Maybe the biggest question in light of how fast digital changes is the question of streamer with DAC or separate Streamer and DAC. One other question is the streamer & bridge the same thing? OK Thanks!! 
128x128artemus_5
@ artemus_5

sorry to piggyback on your post, but seems like you had good contributors...

I am, unlike you, looking to connect to Spotify and Tidal. I don't understand why a streamer would provide better sound than an iPhone if I am just using internet streaming services, and connecting the iPhone to a DAC..?
@whatsthatbuzz

I don’t understand why a streamer would provide better sound than an iPhone
Just like all phones are not equal, all streamers are not equal. I’m an old guy and I HATE these little phones. More precisely I hate that people think these are computers when they are only half (F)assed computers. They are doing 27 different jobs and none of them well IMO. They are great as a portable device. I use one if I’m out and about and need to use the net. But at home for real surfing, I would never consider using the phone Partially cause I have poor vision. I’m not sure that a phone can even play lossless music. Pretty sure mine cant. But there too, paying for a music subscription is foreign to me. But I guess its great fr those who have no music library. If music quality means nothing then a phone will do. But if you want good hi def you will need more I think. There again, there are other younger people who understand the younger culture priorities better than I do. Someone may explain it better. And then the phone may be all you want.

WOW Yeah you didn’t ask for that rant did ya? Pay no attention. I’m just come out from taking steroid for a week and irritation comes far too easy. Nothing personal (-:

Let me explain my problem with the phone more clearly. It does a lot of tasks. Its a great invention. However, I've always found that anything which does a lot of thing have to have compromises built in to allow that. Therefore they don't do anything particularly. Its that way with every one that I have encountered. The phone simply does not have the size to isolate the necessary items that will interfere with each other. Therefore you have noise which interferes with the signal most often. It may not show as outright noise to the end user. But it will show up on a scope and when A-B'd against a product which does have proper isolation it will show that it is far inferior. Hope that helps.
Whatsthatbuzz is your phone passing high resolution to the dac? At least CD quality? If so you might not notice a huge improvement by going with an inexpensive streamer. Seems like in streaming improvement is in baby steps unless you want to spend a lot of $$$. But even then I can’t say for sure I never had a 5 figure streamer.
I got this idea from Aurender CEO in a interview. He does not let hdd do the playing. OK for storage, but hdd hands off to SSiD for play. Thus the question as to whether the vault has ssid and therefore a better player?

I think this level of details are less important in low end or mid end equipment. Try something and see if you like the sound regardsless of the tech inside. Read what others like, like the Node 2i.
If you are only gonna play ripped music a simple RaspberryPi with a dac should work great. You can buy them with built-in dac-cards or with inteface cards to connect to an external dac (I use this right now).

If you can tinkle a bit with it yourself you can have a solution for less than $200. If you prefer to buy pre-built solutions they cost somewhere around $500 and up.

Here are some options
https://orchardaudio.com/shop?olsPage=products%2Fpcnp-strmr

https://volumio.org/product/volumio-primo/

https://www.hifiberry.com/