Wanting to upgrade my streaming sound quality.

There’s a used N100 on eBay asking under $1800. I like to buy high-quality stuff used. If you could find a used Ayre QB-9 Twenty, that’d be a fine DAC to present balanced input to your MAC preamp.

It’s Roon and Qobuz for me, I rarely spin anything on my TD124, a handsome icon.

db

You have what looks like a good pre-amp with DAC (Mc) to start with, ie a pretty good digital setup, so you really have to be careful about knowing what specifically it is with the sound and/or streaming features you want to change or improve or you could be chasing (expensive) ghosts.

Are you comparing to your vinyl? Are you comparing apples/apples in terms of same release of an album on vinyl and available on Tidal?  Things like MQA with the streaming service alone could make a big difference in how things sound.  Could be better or worse...that's a highly subjective determination.  Not familiar with Tidal and MQA specifically so hard to say with confidence.

Often streaming services use more recent releases of albums than the original vinyl releases and newer digital releases tend to be way different at the source generally louder overall with a totally different mix. So the release you have on vinyl could be much different than the one provided by the streaming service at the source and nothing you do with changing gear alone will make them sound the same or even close.

So my advice is be careful and be sure you are comparing apples/apples before making changes.

BTW I am going through some similar exercises at present looking to maybe update my streaming to newer gear and my findings are you really have to be careful to avoid spinning your wheels both feature and sound wise.

Thanks to everyone. I’m seeing some thoughts that a dedicated streamer would be better than my iPad. Soix your suggestions sound good and might be close to my budget. Mapman it’s hard to know what recordings are what. I’ve seen some things that the dac in my preamp may not be the best. Db I’m going to check out that used n100 on eBay. 

With only $2.5k to spend, you'll have to be very judicious with purchases, otherwise may be disappointed. Many good and not so good choices, be prepared for possible letdowns. With so many innovations, products and directions one may take with streaming, hard to give advice. I prefer two computer setup and optical network, others prefer one computer and ethernet, and this is just two of so many choices that need to be made.

FWIW, I've actively avoided digital audio for the last 30 years because just about everything I listened to would induce listening fatigue pretty quickly along with the tonal quality of digital being not as pleasing to my ear as that of vinyl on a turntable.

I'm quite happy with this setup which would fall under your $2,500 budget:

Supra Cat 8 Ethernet cable ~$60

Pro-ject Stream Box S2 Ultra streamer (~$800 new, $400 used) >

Audioquest Jitterbug USB cleaner ~$60 >

Stordiau Lush 1 USB cable ~$250 >

Denafrips Pontus II DAC ~$1700

Each of these components was selected to make the sound smoother and more pleasing to my ear. I can now listen for an entire 8-10 hour work day to digital music.