Streamers - Auralic, Aurender, Lumin, others...

@timothy468 Innuos is not listed on Roon partners website. Do you use is as a Roon core or Roon endpoint?

@charles007100  Incorrect.

About USB. 

If you are using the coaxial / digital connection or AES then the Sreamer times the bits... if you use USB then the DAC does. A bit of an oversimplification, but gets the point across.  

It comes from history. Whenndigital audio began the dominant low voltage connection was coaxial... RCA. Then the computer came around... it could stream bits but not in the same format as DAC inputs. So retiming and conversion was required. So, DAC manufactures added a USB input, with a bunch of additional processing so they could be timed and converted. Some companies produced only USB DACS. Anyway, most now have both. Which input sounds better is largely a question of which of your components is better... if your streamer is better then typically RCA, or AEC (Balanced as is XLR in interconnects) will sound better. If your DAC is much better than your streamer... then it is likely USB sounds better. 

When your DAC and streamer are of similar quality you have to try them. I have a high end DAC and streamer... I tried them both,... very little difference if any. The DAC manuafacturer worked on making both really good. 

If you really have questions go into a high end audio store. Audition a Bluesound Node and a high end streamer... this should dispel any questions you may have about streamers making a difference. 

OP

I started with a MAC and ROON. the mac acted as the server and client too

the DAC I started with was a CHORD Mojo and worked Up the ladder to the Hugo.

they all sounded very very good, but I tried to listen to ladder dacs such as Denafrips. Well, that was the sound I fell for. 

at that point, I wanted to explore Streaming engines, and I landed with the Eversolo.

I also tried brands such as Bluesound Node but in my opinion, the Eversolo had the upper hand

YMMV

I have owned a dozen or two dozen streamer / DACs for my main, office, and headphone systems over the last twenty years. PCs and Macs are poor performing streamers. Purpose built streamers make a difference and the better they are (virtually always more expensive) the better they sound. I’ve had streamers (not counting many iterations of tweaked PCs and Macs) and they make a huge difference... like all audio gear... don’t listen to the hype about clocks or slick marketing. Read professional reviews, listen to them in systems and at dealers. What matters is how they sound and that is like night and day from bottom to top. 

I remember my anxiety when I bought my $22K Aurender... had I wasted my money? During the first cut I listened to I couldn’t believe what a great deal I got... it was more than worth it. As I verified over the next year this unit sounded as good or better than my great vinyl system... I could not tell the difference between a red book CD, a stored file and the vinyl (except by surface noise)... and that high resolution streamed files could sound better than what I owned. So... for years now all my other media has collected dust and I have been freed to enjoy music I never heard of before from my visually infinite Qobuz library. 

clocking quality is key as is noise management... different dacs work better or worse depending on their ideal connection/digital feed, so the master clock needs to be at the right place

it is all quite system and situation dependent, from reliability of internet feed, to power quality from the mains ac line, to local in-room/in-house power quality resulting from noise from other devices, to choices of hifi gear

all this said, i think the major rules to abide by are:

a. clearly know what dac you are wanting to feed the music stream to, and optimize around that specific dac input

b.  if it is a usb feed, then get the best clock at the dac (either within it, or on newer dacs, drive the dac’s external clock input with a quality external clock)

c. if it is a feed via aes ebu, spdif rca/bnc or i2s, then the clock signal is fed to the downstream dac from the streamer, thus the streamer should have the highest quality master clock

d. use linear power supplies wherever possible, not just for the quality of power supplied to the devices, but to minimize the spurious noise put into the shared ac line by smps’s

e. try to filter/cleanse the  ethernet feed well with passive (muon) or active (optical isolation, etherregen, hifi oriented switches etc etc) solutions ... note that most common ethernet use lowest common denominator switch mode power supplies