Please help my ignorant a$$, I just want a good streamer...I think.

An Innuos Zen Mini 3 sounds like it would work for you. However, as you already have a DAC then maybe go up a level to the Zen 3. The CD ripping could not be more user friendly. Pop a CD in. Set it to fast or quiet (slower) mode and it pops out about 5 minutes later available to play via the Innuos Sense app. You definitely wouldn’t need to hire anyone. There are plenty of other no doubt sensible options to come but in terms of simple plug and play user friendliness allied to great sound the Innuos likely wins.

Roon is a divisive product. Many are evangelical about it. Many don’t see what the fuss is about. One further advantage of the Innuos route is that the former sounds better without Roon whereas many other products can be improved by it.

You have every right to ignore people who want you to now learn about streaming or how x and y will help you do z. Streaming should be as plug and play as playing a CD. The fact that it isn’t is not your problem. Innuos is one of the few products which is plug and play. Simple instructions with good pictures on cabling. Download their Sense app and the rest is easy.

Having auditioned the Aurender at length I would say the app is okay but doesn’t come near the Innuos Sense app in terms of depth of functions and fundamental user friendliness. Aurender make good streamers but, as observed, lack the actual functionality being asked for here. 

Gotta love social media. Bloke takes the time to write 11 full paragraphs on what he does and doesn’t know or want. There’s still someone who thinks the solution is re-education and still someone who wants to talk technical. Who’s the “ignorant ass” here? The OP or the people who skim read the OP and came up with the exact opposite of what the OP explicitly says they wanted.

I’d be the first to despair that people don’t know the basics of IT 22 years into the 21st century but equally it’s not a contractual obligation and, frankly, no matter what the advances, it simply shouldn’t be required in order to “play music”. That it often does is not a reflection of poor user knowledge so much as poor user interfaces.

Thus why Innuos keeps coming up. The product od plug and play. The app is streets ahead.  

In fairness to you John then it must be said straight up that the Innuos Sense app does not yet have full Tidal integration. In practice what they do they have works very well but it does mean that if you want your fave Tidal albums to show up properly in Sense you have to add them as faves in Tidal or the Tidal app first. Playlists are a bit more clunky too but… the next major update for the Sense app is clear. We’re currently on v2.08. I would expect 2.09 to be preparing for Tidal Connect and I’d expect 3.0 to be full Tidal Connect integration. They have an excellent site which shows their full roadmap and, rather wonderfully, it’s user led i.e. we can use their app to not just report bigs but to also make feature suggestions and then seen how many others have asked for the same thing and what Innuos are doing about it.
 

Although you can thus get more instant gratification from elsewhere by going for devices which already have Tidal Connect I’d suggest you talk to people currently using Innuos Sense.

There are two good reasons to do this. Firstly, they will all talk about the sound quality since Sense came along, which is outstanding. Secondly, they will talk about the Qobuz integration i.e. the way Qobuz (French version of Tidal)  is seamlessly integrated into the app so that, even though there’s no Qobuz Connect, it feels like there is.

If they do half with Tidal of what they’ve done with Qobuz then it’ll be worth the wait. It’s just ludicrous and way ahead of all other apps from manufacturers.

Fourth paragraph. Brilliant. Every streamer app ever being described there in terms of functionality. Only the rest require next to none of that set up. Open app; connect to wi-fi; find network storage; log into Tidal etc. Press play. 
 

My paragraph is shorter than yours… for a reason :)

Glad you got sorted. Now just enjoy the music.