Looking for best streamer without DAC under $3500

My equipment: Intel NUC Mini 7i5BNH i5-7260U DDR NUC7i5BNH in the place of a Roon Nucleus that I used to use.  My purpose:  Using Roon to stream Tidal and mostly to explore for new music.  My accompanying DAC a tubed Cary Audio 200ts.  With this DAC connected to an Oppo UDP-203 player, I can listen to music either via CD or streamed.  The sound quality is great, but I am having issues with Roon streaming Tidal, sometimes it works and sometimes not, i.e., sometimes Roon just cannot make Tidal play.  I noticed the reference here to using Spotify by others.  Does Spotify have the same sound quality as Tidal, where if you upgrade to 19.99 a month, you get hi resolution quality?  But insights on how to get Roon proprietary software to mesh with Tidal software would be an eye opener, if you can fill that in.  Cheers.       

@ rbstehno  could you explain us what do you mean by "usb crap" please?  It's just a digital interface and DAC with USB Async mode exists since years...
I've listened to many high end sound systems driven by USB DAC including Meitner and the results were stunning...
I recycled an Atom mini server for my friend and installed on it Debian + MPD.  It is hooked to Ayre QB9, Krell KRC-3, Krell KSA-200s and Dynaudio Speakers: Wow factor is much present!

+1 for Lumin U1 mini
I run mine with a MHDT, or Mojo dac and it is fantastic.

Well, this thread was interesting to say the least. Lot of talk about USB, but I didn't mention that in my post and that has no baring on my decision considering it's not usually the best connection to begin with.

I went with a Lumin T2...

Cheers.

the guy ranting about USB is just plain wrong. Done right, like any other interface, can sound wonderful.

$20K to deliver digital sounds like somebody has more money than sense.

If you want to use Roon why not get the box specifically designed to do that, a Nucleus. Everything about it is designed and optimized to do just that. The software is written specifically to run Roon and as mentioned, you don't have all of that background crap running like a Windows or Osx based system.

For the person having trouble streaming Tidal with Roon that sounds like a one-off issue. I am currently running Roon on a Mac Mini streaming hours at a time with zero hiccups. Are you sure it is a Roon issue or is it an issue with your DIY server? Try one of the other services like Qobuz that have a free trial and see if they have issues.