Music streamers

Has anyone compared a streamer/DAC combo to the Audioengine B1 Bluetooth receiver? I’ve been using the B1 for a few years, sending iTunes music to my 2-channel stereo, and the sound is outstanding. I’ve been interested in exploring a streamer/DAC combo but don’t know how the sound can be much better than this. My primary reason for looking to move away from the B1 are recent Bluetooth connectivity issues with the iPhone.

After using a Raspberry Pi with a  HIFIBERRY DIGI+ PRO SPDIF board and iFi power supply (running Roon) for years to feed decently expensive DACs (e.g. Berkeley, SimAudio, Bricasti, Mojo Audio) I finally tried a streamer upgrade after spending less on my latest DAC than originally planned.   

I purchased a Bricasti M5 and using the same Shunyata SPDIF cable heard a much bigger difference in sound quality than I was expecting.
Hind sight I should have upgraded my digital streamer years ago if I had known I would hear that much difference.   

The Pi is amazing for the price and a Pi with the Allo Signature (requiring dual power supplies) is likely a step up from what I was using and is still super cheap compared to the M5 which is cheap compared to some other streamers...  But, in the context of my system (Sim 740P+Pass 250.8+Spendor D9) and my ears the amount of improvement I heard with the M5 was up there with DAC, preamp, and amp changes I've made over the years.   I hear a darker soundstage with much better detail retrieval.  It is like I just washed a window between me and the music.

After this experience, I suggest you at least do what I didn't and compare some in your system to see what differences you hear (if any).   My initial goal was to find one under $1K but since I want to use SPDIF that was a little trickier than USB only.   The Project Stream Box S2 and Sonore UltraRendu were two cheaper units I was considering if switching to USB.

Good Luck...

Consider one of the Sonore Rendu models. And Roon. A match made in heaven. You’ll wonder how you lived without Roon. As you read about the Rendu, you’ll understand why music sounds considerably better on a Rendu, as it uses fiberglass Ethernet, not copper. No noise. Just make sure you’ve got plenty of RAM for Roon - at least 16 GB. 

I see some of these responses and some people just don’t understand what a streamer is. A streamer like the Aurender/Lumin/auralic are all computers. A lot of them run linux, who cares? 99% of users of these streamer servers can’t even spell linux, so what can they do to fix these streamers if they have any problems? How are these users going to backup their attached disks? How are they going to restore this data?
Most of these streamer manufacturers claim you need all of this cpu power to handle streaming services or large ssd drives for cache. Far from reality. I run multiple Roon endpoints simultaneously and cpu is fairly light.
I’ve ran Roon on both a Mac and on linux, no difference in sq. Put my TB of music on hdd and on ssd with no difference in sq. (Quite a few others have also stated no difference in sq in different operating systems or preference of what media the music is stored on.
The biggest difference you will see in sq is quit using usb to your dac then you can keep your server out of the audio room.

I really like my BlueSound Node 2i.  I added a DAC and sold it on Audiogon.  I thought the BlueSound DAC sounded much better.  Wonder if an expensive streamer sounds SIGNIFICANTLY better?  If so, what do you hear?