Just playing devil’s advocate here. Your post made it sound like you were happy with the Node’s sound just fine, especially after installing a LPS, and it was working perfectly with all your Favorites on Amazon, but for some reason you switched to Qobuz from Amazon. Why? Does Qobuz REALLY sound significantly (not marginally) better than Amazon? If it is Qobuz that is buggy, why not simply switch back to Amazon and save yourself $2000 to $4000, or are you just itching for a new toy? Nothing wrong with wanting something better, and yes, maybe the DACs in some of the ones you are considering will be better than your external TOPPING D90 AKM.
There seems to be a significant number of people on this forum who want a great streamer without any DAC built-in whatsoever, not even a marginal "convenience" DAC. They'd rather use an external DAC of their own choosing.
I’m just wondering if you’d get more bang for your bucks by switching back to something that was working fine, and instead, spend the bucks to upgrade your DAC.
Streamers and software
It's been a battle. I have had a Bluesound Node 2i for 5 yrs. I upgraded the power supply. There is nothing wrong with function or sound. I switched to Qobuz a few months ago. I transferred my songs from amazon to Qobuz. Qobuz works great when using the Bluetooth function. When I want to play Qobuz thru BluOS, I am missing several thousand songs, called Favorites. Loading and searching times are not usable.
Finally after 2 months BLUOS says they have no solution. QOBUZ is working on a direct connect app to the streamer, but no release date.
So, reluctantly, I started looking at a streamer. I find several other streamers but have buggy software.
So, from what I see the Innuous pulsar mini has good software I would like to spend as little as I can but it looks like $1-$2k? It would be nice to have a linear power supply. Thanks for any suggestions are welcome.
Here is some I looked at.
Holo Audio Red, Ever solo, Innuous, Volumio