Educate me on music streamers, please.

@crn3371 - I have been able to stream Audirvana to the Raspberry Pi without issue (DLNA).  

With regard to Audirvana vs. Roon, I like the sound much better with Audirvana.  I just don't like Roon's sound at all.  I will, however, use Roon because the UI is so much better and more entertaining.  Then I'll go to listen on Audirvana......

@soundchasr congrats on your Node purchase. Looking forward to hearing about it.

I don't if my experience will be helpful to you, but here goes...

I used Audirvana for a while. Tried Roon and found myself going back to Audirvana a bunch. Roon's interface was more friendly than Audirvana at the time, but the latter sounded better. 

Anyway, I ended up getting a Moon ACE and found the MiND2 to be really convenient and user friendly. After a few months of breaking in the ACE, I did some A/B tests with Audirvana and found streaming with the ACE/MiND2 much more lively and enthralling. I've been a subscriber to Tidal for a while. I've tried Qobuz a bunch of times, but always end up cancelling and sticking with Tidal. The sound difference to me is negligible. The main reason I've kept Tidal is for the catalog (sometimes I find some really out of left field 90's indie releases on it). If I was into classical, I'd have stuck with Qobuz. 

I do have a bunch of hi-res audio files on an external. When I want to listen I just plug it into my MacBook and connect to the amp via UPnP. It works great and sounds great. 

Hope this was helpful.

@edicionretro 
Thanks for that info!  The only thing I don't like about Tidal and Qobuz is that neither (as far as I can tell) has a good way of making a custom channel based on several artists or a playlist.  Deezer seems to be the best at this...

@soundchasr I agree with you. That was a nice feature with Deezer. Tidal does a thing called "Mixes for You". It automatically generates them based on what you're listening to. Unfortunately, you can't make one yourself.

That's the big thing with the digital side. There's no one solution that will grant you everything. Roon came close for me, but it just didn't sound right.  

veroguy did you try any of the mods from Fidelity Audio on a Node 2i?

If so how much of an improvement is there?

soundchasr I just tried Deezer on my Node 2i and find the SQ about the same as Spotify that is to say both are a step below Tidal and Qobuz imo.

fwiw