New streamer or dac?

@bikeboy52 Aurender make fantastic products and from a convenience standpoint they are super easy to operate and even internet radio sounds great.

Where they do excel is playing back ripped music SQ is superb and streaming is state of the art.

They'll sound good with less expensive DACs so put most of your budget into the Aurender. The N100, N20 and N30 are their latest models. N20 is the best value and AES/EBU sounds better than USB.

Whatever you decide audition everything first with your own music.

@pwayland If you are using a PSA DS DAC with built in streaming card you have already done away with the I2s unless you want to connect a CDT by I2s.

There is an advantage to having a streaming card in a DAC, Mola Mola and DCS do this also but I seriously don't believe this setup could compare to a full blown streamer with or without separate DAC.

The jury is out on eliminating "old tech" such as AES/EBU which GENERALLY gives better sound even over I2s and mostly over USB depending on your setup.

The PSA DS upsamples everything to DSD, it's not a bad idea but you can't select individual frequency settings.

@pwayland Regarding I2s I really believe it'll be the USB of the future but it hasn't received mainstream support yet. It's mainly PS Audio and the Chi-Fi companies that are in full support.

AES/EBU, provided you have a quality setup it will USUALLY outperform USB. However it'll only support up to 24 bit 192 kHz PCM and single DSD. This covers 99% of what a regular user will encounter but higher sampling rates need to go through USB or I2s.

I've seen many reviews that preferred USB over I2s but that's basically because USB is highly developed whereas I2s is just starting out and it's higher specced too, so I2s brings much promise.

@bikeboy52 One box solutions have been discussed but what is often overlooked is the cost savings in cables. Decent cables are going to cost around $1000+

DAC Power, IC and Digital $3000

Server Power $1000

Pre Amp Power, IC $2000

Power or Integrated amp not included.