For those that have separate Streamers & DACS

I'm using iFi Zen Streamer USB to Wyred4Sound DAC2v2SE. The iFi Zen was a little kludgey for initial setup but it sounds far better than I expected. At a $399 price point I wasn't expecting much and I'm still pleasantly surprised.

The Zen stream was an interim purchase for me as my previous streamer had died and I needed something quick. I assumed I'd be trading up within a few months of finding my next streamer.

Maybe not though. I'm still really enjoying the heck out of the iFi zen. And I've got a Matrix Audio X-SPDIF 2 on the way to serve as an I2S converter between the USB iFi Zen and the I2S interface on the DAC. 

put a decent 12v lps into the zs and it takes another meaningful step up in sq - for the $ just crazy crazy good... people over-use the term ’giant killer’ but i think it can apply here... or at least ’giant-matcher’...

note: my use is in roon-mode, with cleansed ethernet feed into the z-s, with sotm 12v lps - i won’t purport to say it beats much more expensive ones in other modes

@jjss49 Thank you for the advice, I’ll add the LPS to my upgrade plan. FWIW, my Roon Core is a SonicTransporter i5, which appears to also be a candidate for an LPS.