late to streaming, recommendations?

I think you should get a streamer with great software like Wiim, Bluesound, or Eversolo.  The main function of a streamer is giving you access to a lot of music without it being a pain in the ass.

People using expensive streamers with crappy software to tune their systems probably have a lot of room issues they don’t know about.  Even worse is people that spend big money on digital cables.  It’s like buying an expensive sports car and instead of going to the track and learning how to drive it, you just start modifying it with random parts.  You should learn how to extract the max performance with what you have first.

By far the worst advice I see on this forum is someone posts that they don't like the sound of their system.  Instead of teaching that person how to figure out what the problem is, you will get 25 different people recommending a  more expensive component.  Just randomly buying stuff.  

to kumizi

well I have to say the low cost "audio grade" usb cable I got off Amazon made a huge difference. (I also replaced the power cable and ethernet cable at the same time).  Spent a few hours last night just smoking weed and listening to all my favorite test songs through the lumin and streaming has never sounded so good.  Very happy with the u2 mini and spotify lossless for now.  Hearing stuff I hadn't heard before  (there's a very subtle flute in the background of parts of "always a woman"! ) Might look into upgrading my DAC in the future, but going to just sit and enjoy the system as is for awhile before I make another move.  Thanks for all the help here, I do feel like I've finally entered the modern age.  Thinking about whether I need to rip all my obscure CD's onto a hard drive and how much work that would be.  But, again, no rush.  Time to enjoy the music.

Since you selected the lumin u2 streamer and suggested that at some point you'll be ready to upgrade your DAC, you may want to understand which output through which the lumin delivers its best for performance. Once you figure that out, select a DAC optimized to work with your streamer.  Understand the difference between asynchronous and synchronous DACs and why those differences are important in terms of synergy between your streamer and DAC so that you avoid paying for features on your DAC, for example, an expensive proprietary clock, that you may not even use because clocking maybe controlled by the streamer.  

 I'm only suggesting that you take some time learn about what you have and how to move forward such that you maximize your system's performance and not waste money.

Purchase components that will grow with your future purchases. I bought my Martin-Logan CLS Is speakers over 35 years ago and they are still world class today in terms of what they do well (midrange that's hard to beat at any price point).  Buy once, cry once.

I read through this thread pretty quickly and might have missed it--but I didn't seen one mention of Roon. And that's the part of this equation that I can't wrap my mind around. Does everyone here stream via individual providers' apps (ie, Qobuz or Tidal), or do they use Roon?

Another issue that vexes me is cut-by-cut or album-by-album listening (the de facto standard on Qobuz, for example) vs a "curated" stream of music a la the disk jockey days. I want Qobuz catalogue put together for me in endless streams of topic-relevant selections (ie, Baroque vs Bach vs Romantic vs Impressionist vs choral--just for classical, though there are other categories for other music).

Still no streamer, though I have excellent NOS/R2R DACs and DDCs here.