@hilde45 -- you and i have been together on many of these digital streaming/tech threads here in the past year
just to recap where i am on this, after investing much time and $ during calendar year 2020 figuring all this out as a new, addiitonal front end for my system, i would summarize my key beliefs/observations at present as follows
- dac technology is quite stable/mature... r2r (whether discrete or on-a chip) has been around for many years, ds conversion can now be made to sound really excellent - so long as the digital receiver can handle the modern input sample rates/bitrates it is the power supply and output stage design that drives the sound quality - the most recent development is that very good sounding dacs are less expensive than ever, from chi-fi and other makers -- this brings very good sound to the budget audiophile, and puts alot of pressure on makers of 3-4-5-6 grand dacs on really delivering something superior... they are really making super high quality output stages as in megabuck line stages with excellent circuitry, isolation, parts quality, often with tube buffering to get purity and beauty in tone to go along with the excellent resolution that can be gotten out of the d/a conversion stage...
- streamers are also fairly stable as pieces of equipment, but the key here is that streaming services are still shaking out, and this will continue for the next 5-10 years i believe... and they are each offering new interfaces, sampling rates, higher resolutions, specialized content, each trying to lock each other out from the user’s eyeball range with proprietary u-i’s, dedicated software wrap-arounds (witness tidal connect, spotify connect, and so on) -- this tough and evolving competition creates some level of instability (and risk) in streamer purchases, as these are basically dedicated computers that will need updating when the streamed sources change the game, their interfaces etc -- to me, the resulting indicated action is to buy a good low to mid priced streamer (that sound excellent, btw, so long as proper internet connectivity is provided) so as to keep options open and don’t end up owning an expensive brick down the road that are no longer supported/updated
my 2 cents