Higher End DACs

I don’t have $30k to blow on the Extreme, but my curiosity was piqued when romaz jumped on the Extreme bandwagon saying that it’s better than anything he could possibly build. Now I want to hear it to see what it’s all about. 
After comparing side by side the different Innuos models, and comparing it to my ultrarendu and optical rendu, I suspect the server/renderer have more impact on sound signature than the DAC. 

I would buy one that can completely unfold MQA so you can take advantage of TIDAL.  I can hear the difference and sold a brand new DAC that was attached to my Bluesound Node 2i in order to hear the complete unfold of MQA.  The Bluesound sounded better by itself.  Kind of like the Emperors New Cloths,  If you don't think you can hear a difference after spending the extra money on a DAC, you think there must be something wrong with you.  You also need to not listen to dealers who tell you they can't hear a difference when hearing MQA.  They just want to sell something expensive to add to their sale. 

As one of the Taiko / Sound Galleries group that fathered, assisted in development of the boat anchor, I would like to give you my takeaways about Music Servers, digital equipment and obsolescence.

The Extreme is the 3rd Generation product, and the result of a lot of things we have learnt over the past 4 years.

Take away 1 - if you are happy to stick to foobar then you can get pretty good sound with a small and low power computer and operating it from the command line prompt.  We think Roon is the best Music Discovery software out there with excellent integration of Qobuz streaming and Tidal streaming.  Roon is a very busy piece of software that needs a 64 bit OS for it to run well.  The best sounding OS for roon is a carefully custom built and optimized build of Windows LTSC.  The kernal of Win LTSC is a very audible step up from the best audio tweaked Linux versions we have tested.

Take away 2 - To get the best sound out of a roon based Music Server, you need to have sufficient cores to have the key processes run on separate cores.  As in the good old MS DOS days, low latency sounds better, we find that is still true today, just achieving low latency is a lot more complicated than it was back then

Take away 3 - Digital gear have a lot of RF emissions which are basically impossible to stop.  These emissions have to be managed, and when effective hardware and software solutions are implemented you can hear the differences quite clearly.

Bughead Emporor is a leading example of how complex software routines can voice the sound.  This easily detectable effect is delivered by managing / shaping the RF activity generated by the software

Take away 4 - Digital gear is very vibration sensitive.  All crystal clocks are vibration sensitive, and clocks are also power supply sensitive.

Take away 5 - The quality and stability of the power supply is a key driver in the quality of the sound the system can deliver.  Both Inuos and Taiko use lots of Mundorf caps, because they sound better and well worth the extra cost.  There is a mechanism by which the mechanical properties and the electrochemistry of Mundorf caps affects the sound being by the DAC, even though just 0's and 1's are being delivered.

The Extreme takes RF management and vibration control to the extreme.  Everything cost reasonable that makes and audible difference has been implemented.  12 sticks of RAM, that utilizes the all of the memory bus channels, and you can hear the difference.  Custom ordered industrial RAM, we can hear the difference too

Take away 6 - Obsolescence of software ? Roon is getting better sounding with each update, we have no reason to expect that trend not to continue.  Windows LTSC has a 10 year support life from Microsoft.  The other choices are Linux with its dedicated volunteers and Mac OS which is orphaning 3rd party software with each update.

Obsolescence of hardware. The Xeon processors and the server mobo also have 10 year service lives

The most expensive part of the Extreme is the chassis, and Taiko is not going to orphan that. It has 6,000 holes for ventilation and RF emission control.  We can expect the Chassis to continue to do a great job for many years to come on these two fronts.

When an audiophile transitions from listening to 90 percent vinyl, to listening to 90 pct digital delivered by the Extreme, the boat anchor is doing something musically satisfying ;-)

If you really want to go upmarket, take a look at Meitner's best DAC.

I know roon needs a lot to run but I don't  think  it needs 40 threads and 48 gigs of ecc. I transitioned  from vinyl 20 years ago. Once again the OP is looking for a DAC and streamer not a 100lb block over built to the point of absurdity to do the job of delivering music.