Upgrading streamer transport Lumin U2X Vs. Aurender N20

If for sure you only will use USB an Antipodes K21 is just $7000. 

Support is as good as anyone, if one is not technically saavy phone calls and emails can be frustrating, and they can actually login into your computer and network and figure it out. look at this -but I am biased :) 

5 year warranty vs. 2 years for everyone else. 

But as said before demo the stuff- Get your DAC figured out, then once you are familiar with it demo streamer/server/players, they all sound a little different from one another.

With your increased budget you are now in different territory. 

Have you looked at a Grimm MU2? All in one DAC/streamer solution, less boxes, less cables which is appealing. Also as vinylshadow else mentioned Playback Designs reportedly engineer some of the best digital on the planet. Lots of choices out there. 

Great discussion (following). I currently have a U2 Mini into a Denafrips Pontus II 15th and love it.  But this upgrade path is on my mind for the future. I appreciate the clock discussion and the different attention to USB or AES, etc. 

@nubiann you were talking about noisy displays and they’re a non issue with the critical listening feature. 
I do agree the display is not really necessary at all in most cases.
However, I think, and I never tried it, that you can control the streamer and play the music that’s on the mounted SSD if your network is out using the front display and control buttons. It’s a non-issue and zero concern as far as noise goes  

In any case, I personally don’t care for the display on any of my components and I either dim it if it can’t be turned off, or turn it off completely. 

I also don't want to stray too far afield from the OP, but am wondering if anyone's had a chance to do some critical listening on the Innuos Stream 3. We carry other, earlier Innuos products at Alma Music + Audio (Sterling, VA and San Diego, CA), and they've all sounded pretty great, but the Stream 3 no sooner hit the store before someone snapped it up! 

With USB, data clocking is handled BY THE DAC, so (IMHO) you will not get better SQ from streaming by spending $$$ on the digital source.

The best engineered DACs have isolation of the input, reducing noise etc. and buffer the data stream, which is then clocked into the actual DA processing by the DAC's clock, which, with USB, is independent of any timing errors of the input stream; hence, provided the streamer sends correct data to the DAC the sound is 100% dependent on the DAC (gasp), NOT the streamer. 

I believe, and it is my experience, that putting one's $$ into the DAC beats spending large sums on the streamer.  Others will probably disagree but with my Esoteric K-01XDSE, with a Rubidium external clock (feeding into a very highly resolving LA4, XA25, Atria II setup) there seems to be no dependence on the digital source component.  My preferred streaming service is Presto which is supported by the Eversolo T8.  Before Presto's streaming was turned on I was downloading from Presto into an Aurender's SSD.  I have lost no SQ moving to the T8.  Presto does not indulge in any processing of the digital data; other services may perform loudness normalization and even dynamic range compression.