IMO, the underlying hardware aka Streamer, maybe a Raspberry pie, but as long as the software (IOS) is not just the free version, then I would think that should do the job. as others have posted, it is the software and its support that matters. I also believe that power supply is also important aspect. the casing and others may?? but for me, that is secondary. as the streamers prices goes up, clocking and timing of the output to drive the external dac comes to play. Aurender and Innuos are brands I have heard and yes, they are very very good! their boards have to be a different design, but as they say, digital is digital !! it's the underlying CPU and clocking and IOS that makes the difference.
For me, I use streamers as just as it. streaming data from cloud or internal storage. The DAC for me must be external and must be the single most important component for the music reproduction.
