Streamers rabbit hole

  Although it’s over your budget the Bricasti M3 with added network card meets your needs and has great reviews. Maybe a used one ? Terry London reviewed it a few years back in great detail. After giving it some thought plus what you’ve auditioned, I think you’ll be hard pressed to stay at $5K. What I’ve found excluding a DAC you’re at $3k for a streamer with a good power supply and $6k for the same with an upgraded clock. Cheers , Mike B. 

I have owned the following streamers: Bluesound Node2i and Node, Wiim Pro, Innuos ZenMini MK3, Eversolo DMP-A6 ME (with added LPS) and currently a HiFi Rose RS 130 (streamer only--no DAC).  The HiFi Rose RS130 cost significantly more than all the others and I was really wondering beforehand if the cost would be worth it.  I was quite pleasantly surprised at how much better it sounded than all the others I had owned.  I honestly did not think there was much room for upside improvement, but there was.  The other features it has--RoseTube, the incredible screen, etc--are awesome as well.  The user interface is not the best I've used (with those honors going to the Innuos Sense app), but it is OK.  I bought mine at Music Direct and they were great to deal with and even negotiated a little on the price, which was great!  Good luck on your search!

I agree with others that it makes sense to go with the Bluesound Node ICON. You would have the advantage of using the ICON's XLR output to your Anthem's XLR input. The ICON is said to sound best using the XLR ouputs. 

When I take the streaming plunge in the near future I feel that while the Hi-Fi Rose, Aurender and others have minor advantages - including better sound quality - the experience is within the application that you will be using. And what sound quality you may gain, it will come at a fair higher cost.

While my wife listens/plays music on the tuner, she does not touch the vinyl and only occasionally clicks on songs on my dedicated jukebox computer. Having the music on a handheld will allow her to control and select at will without having to get near my gear! We can all appreciate that, right!?

I did just notice that the ICON went up in price about $100 (this week) on Crutchfield dot com.

I forgot to mention above that I own an Anthem STR Preamp and the Hifi Rose RS130 sounds great with it.