Newbie considering 3 streaming DAC/Servers

edcyn ... Thank you. Interesting assessment and very honest. Food for thought.

I enjoy my Mytek Brooklyn Bridge to the point where it’s essentially taken me off the Upgrade Merry Go Round. The streaming I get from Qobuz and Primephonic (via an Ethernet Cat 7) gives me the cleanest, loveliest fidelity I’ve ever gotten from a stereo. I suppose I could do better than the Mytek’s moving coil analog input but it handily outperforms my aged, admittedly entry level LP3 Moon. When I do comparos with dual layer SACD/CDs, a good three-quarters of the time the Mytek gives me at least as high a sound quality (albeit with a slightly different tinge) as does the straight-to-my-amp SACD output from my Sony 5400ES. The Mytek, btw, feeds a Primaluna Prologue One with 6550 tubes.

On the downside, the Mytek’s thumb drive slot is inconveniently located on the device’s back and, in my case, is blocked by all the wires that are connected to the back of the thing. There’s no SD card slot so I end up routing SD cards to the Mytek via my laptop. As for MQA, I’d use it if I had Tidal, but Qobuz out-wrassled Tidal for my affections. Finally, I gotta say that though the Brooklyn gives me reasonably good fidelity from Internet Radio and such websites as Fiddle Hangout via my laptop, my socks have yet to be knocked off.

If you don’t use Roon then you will want a unit that can handle those different files on its own, sound good without jitter, have potential power supply upgrades down the road and have a solid trouble free user application. I would look at the best Lumin you can afford.

I would also give Roon the free trial period a go. It opens the door to other brands that don’t handle MQA or DSD on its own, like the Linn DSM line for example. 

soix ... Thank you for your response ... I've considered the Innuous Zen Mk3 and it's an attractive package with excellent reviews. And I may still go for it in the end. I am thinking about a DAC upgrade, however. I'm not really interested in ROON so good control software for the unit would be a bonus.

volumizer ... Thank you for your response. I like what I read about the headphone amp on the Brooklyn Bridge. But I’ve also read in other threads that there are issues playing music from an attached USB drive. One of my major asks is the ability to play from local storage at full resolution for PCM and DSD, in addition to streaming services like Tidal.

I own a Brooklyn Bridge, but have no experience with either of the other units you mentioned.  The Mytek sounds superb. It's extremely quiet, and it's easy to use.  

I use it as a phono pre-amp, a DAC for the CD transport, a wireless TIDAL streamer, and a pre-amp/volume control for tube monoblocks from the XLR outputs and a 4-sub DBA from the RCA outputs.  It also has an excellent headphone amp.

I haven't gotten around to running an ethernet cable to it, because I'm getting ready to relocate the hifi to a new room.

Not sure how the MBB works with ROON...haven't subscribed yet.

In that price range I’d add the Innuos Zen Mk3, which can be had used around $2500.