Wanting to upgrade my streaming sound quality.

Calvin, your set up looks good to me and would be right at my budget or a little over. Everyone is pretty much a Quboz fan instead of Tidal, is there really that much difference? It’s easy to change. I’ve also heard good things about Amazon’s Prime new music streaming service. 

Yeah, there's a huge difference between Qobuz and Tidal, at least to my ears.  Amazon Prime was better than Tidal, but wasn't great either. 

Just a comment that the Pro-ject streamer is supposed to sound better than the Bluesound Node (at least the prior version), but I do believe usability is better with the Bluesound Node. The white-label version of the Volumo software used on the Pro-ject streamer is decent, but there are some quirks with the software.

FWIW, these are my listening notes to the major streaming services. It truly was a bit surprising for the same music to sound quite different via different streaming services, but this is what I heard after doing trials of all of these services. (I had and still have a Spotify Premium subscription, got a Qobuz 1-month trial and then proceeded to do trials of the other streaming services)

My subjective impressions of the musicality and sound quality of the major HD streaming services: 

1. Qobuz

2. Primephonic

3. Spotify Premium (320 kbps Ogg Vorbis which is not lossless)

4. IDAGIO

5. Amazon HD

6 Tidal

 

Round 1, Spotify Premium vs Qobuz: I have Spotify Premium with a Family subscription. From a value standpoint, Spotify was my default choice that has the best search as well as working well for my family. From a critical listening perspective in my auditioning sessions, Spotify actually is not bad at conveying detail, pace and presence from music. It sounds musical. Any shortcomings that it has are errors of omission rather than errors of commission. I can listen to Spotify especially in mobile settings and be engaged and immersed in the music. After listening for a longer period of time, Qobuz is clearly better at conveying detail, transparency/clarity, pace and presence, but Spotify doesn't do anything noticeably wrong.

Round 2, Qobuz vs Tidal: So far Qobuz is clearly better than Tidal even listening through pretty cheap desktop passive speakers. Tidal sounds very two dimensional and flat in its sound quality but with some harshness in the high frequencies. I'll listen a bit more to Tidal, but so far I'm not impressed at all. Spotify Premium even seems to sound better than Tidal. 

Some additional thoughts about Tidal after listening on higher quality equipment. I think they have applied some equalization to boost the bass and treble. In the process, I think side effects of doing this is to take out some of the presence of voices and instruments and add an artificial quality to voices and instruments.. Qobuz sounds a LOT better. Spotify Premium also sounds better. To my ears at least. (Disclaimer: Your results may vary). I'm currently listening to a track that is a MQA file on Tidal vs a CD quality file on Qobuz. The CD quality file on Qobuz sounds a LOT fuller and more natural. 

Not a big fan of hip hop, but decided to listen to something that is squarely in Tidal's area of focus. I listened to 'The Box' by Roddy Ricch which is a MQA file on Tidal and CD quality on Qobuz. Same results. The Qobuz file sounds fuller and has more presence. Almost sounds like two different recordings when listening on Qobuz vs Tidal.

Round 3, Qobuz vs Amazon HD: Winner for me is Qobuz for the following reasons.

Amazon: Sounds more flat. Less drive than Qobuz so that some music sounds like it is plodding along. Sound is less full. Amazon HD doesn't necessarily do anything wrong (as does Tidal), but also clearly not as good as Qobuz to my ears.

Qobuz: Much more presence than Amazon HD. More 3-dimensional. Better pace and drive. Better low-frequency response & definition. More range to conveying the emotion in music: (i.e., calmer for calmer music & more drive & pace for more upbeat music)

Round 4, IDAGIO vs Qobuz: Clear winner for me is Qobuz. My impressions are that Qobuz sounds fuller, has more low frequency weight and is able to convey a broader range of expression from greater calm to more drive. Qobuz also seems to have more realistic tonal quality for instruments especially for string instruments.I think this is due to greater clarity and definition from the music as reproduced by Qobuz. I thought that IDAGIO's search design would be compelling to me for listening to classical music, but I'm finding that I actually like Qobuz's search better than that on IDAGIO

Round 5: Qobuz vs Primephonic: 

Sound quality: A Primephonic's sound quality was quite good, but Qobuz' sound quality was still noticeably better. Qobuz provides more presence around instruments and voices while Primephonic, though good, tends to sound more 2-dimensional in its sound quality. The benefit of more presence is that recordings are more engaging because they sound more alive rather than just being reproduced.

Amount of Content: Also, Primephonic's lack of music content was an issue. When I did searches, I would often only be able to see one track shown from an album. Qobuz also has this issue, but to a lesser degree. Qobuz has enough gaps in content filled so that this is not so much of an issue.

Search Quality: From what I remember, search in Primephonic was difficult to use. For classical music, it is important to me to be able to be able to filter on performer and/or conductor. This seemed to be difficult to do in Primephonic. Spotify's search is best, but I'm finding Qobuz's search to be passably good.

 

Summary: I'm finding Qobuz to sound both more realistic and more engaging on all types of music. Jazz, Rock, Classical, even Rap/hip-hop.

A Lumin D2 will get you what you want, within your budget with a little left over for a legitimate CAT6 cable. 1 box, balanced out. Tidal, Qobuz, Roon support. A T2 if you want to reach a little further.

A lumin D2 with a sbooster secondhand can cost you 1500.

And a cat8.

 

I thought I would weigh in on your question as I have embarked on the streamer journey since our house burned down last year in a forest fire. I replaced all my old equipment with similar gear mostly from Audiogon. I love analog, and I found an old VPI TNT VI with a VdH Crimson cartridge to replace my lost analog rig. After looking around for a streamer/DAC, I settled on a Cary Audio DMS 700 (new) and it was amazing to stream music from Qobuz that made the previously wonderfully sounding old Wadia 860 sound restrained. I now run a digital coax from the Wadia and use it as a transport for the few CD's that were donated to me. The Cary approached, and in some cases almost equaled my analog rig. I then needed another streamer in a different part of the house so I tried the DMS 650 ($4796 at the Cary Direct Store), which was almost the equal of the 700, as it is a new product for Cary. At the same time, I trialed the DMS 800 (a new product for them) which knocked my socks off for detail, holographic imaging and not a hint of digital harshness. Though the DMS 650 is above your stated budget, consider that it has state of the art AKM DAC's that will resolve all the high resolution formats you utilize. It also has balanced outputs, with multiple digital input options, and I suspect you would notice that it will make the streaming of digital music close enough to your analog rig that you will use it more often as you explore more and more music from cyberspace. Cary Audio will let you trial it for 30 days to see if you like it. Alternatively, you could try to find a used DMS 600 for close to your budget, which I have not heard, but others have reported on favorably. Good Luck.