Best streamer for a returning audio guy

The most expeditious and lowest cost way to get into streaming is to use a laptop PC and a USB DAC or USB audio interface.   The very most low cost unit is only $25 from Sweetwater.   The sound quality is equal to your typical consumer grade CD player.  This $25 device, along with one of your laptop PCs and you're good to go.

There are better quality DAC devices out there, but they cost more of course.  If you've got the budget, get one of those.  None of the music streamers will have a user interface as good as that which you'll have on a laptop PC.   The built-in Windows Media Center does a decent job.  Many people will drop about $50 or so for the JRiver media manager.     I'm a retired Linux engineer and only run Linux at home, so I run JRiver on a laptop running Linux.  I paid all of $200 for the laptop off of Craigslist.   Sound quality is every bit as good as any streamer and is solely determined by the DAC I run.  There are many good ones out there for $500 or less.  The Behringer I pointed you at is adequate and cheap.  If you like the sound quality you get from your CD player, then the Behringer will match that.

I'm another one for the Bluesound Node.  Simply the best price:performance ratio along with the best UX for any streamer.  I've owned both the Node 2i and the current Node and I've been extremely happy with them.  Buy a good power cable and RCA cables and it's a great sounding streamer.   

You can go up from there but it's hard to find things that are really worth the price increase.  I've owned the CXN at 2x the cost and it's a great streamer, but the lack of native Roon support caused me to return it to buy the newest Node.  At 4x the cost, the NAD option is pretty good.  Same UX as it uses the BluOS, but it's not any better sounding then the CXN at less the cost.  The Arcam also falls into the category of costing more then the CXN with not as good SQ.  The Lumin D2 is excellent at 5x the cost of the Node, and is where I'd upgrade to as you're not sacrificing anything but it's a huge price jump.  The HiFi Rose streamers are also good sounding, but very glitchy at a high price.  The Simaudio Moon 280d is amazing, but very expensive and the UX isn't as good unless you're running Roon.  

Personally, my reference system runs the Moon 280d and my secondary system is running the current Bluesound Node.  I'm very happy with both units, but if I do upgrade the next thing will be going from the Node to a Lumin D2.  

I concur with Bluesound. Nothing in the industry comes close to the value and the interface is the best in the business.

Cambridge CXNV2 is excellent 

have one 3 yrs easy to use and great sound

v easy to hit firmware updates 

Bluesound is supposed to be very well regarded at a fair price.  I am waiting for their update to the Vault 2i and I like to rip all my CDs too.  I use Amazon Music as my streaming service which means having streamers that work with Amazon Music natively (to get highest resolution playback possible) is challenging. Qobuz, Tidal etc are everywhere.  

I've seen streamers north of $18K price points and just scratch my head...