Well...I am taking the plunge into digital..

AirPlay isn’t bad, maybe just a notch below Red book CD.  Chromecast sounds much better.  At any rate, using AirPlay means that you haven’t optimized what digital can do.  If you are happy with current setup, that’s great, but don’t make any conclusions about the capabilities of digital until you go there

welcome to the the Dark Side.  I waded in carefully, but have become both curious about how to get great sound, seduced by the convenience, and impressed with the sound. Despite my many 100s of albums and three excellent turntables, i rarely play them any more. I can generally find a remastered version of "X" on Tidal or Qobuz that is significantly better.

I have sweated the details, form power supplies to networking to isolation.  Yet by many high end standards i have a pittance invested.  Its somewhat unfair of course since i build and modify my own stuff frequently.  Right now, as I learn, i have three DACs, all with somewhere between 30% and 50% my on content - fixing the weak or obsolete points (e.g.: replace SPDIF with USB and a great clock; isolate the input, build a super clean LPS).

My digital sounds like analog, minus the faults.  But its easy to get mediocre or even annoying digital sound, ans many have proven.  I wont go into the long version.  Do a quick search and find some extensive posts i've made for others.  I ought to consolidate them into a blog and link the whole enchilada.

Have a joyous holiday, whichever flavor *(hey, the last supper was seder after all....)

Yes... Christos Anesti! For those celebrating American Easter...

I  very much appreciate the feedback comments from those who have boldly gone before me... 

I get fantastic sound through my streamer using a wifi extender plugged in next to my streamer. My streamer was not much harder than setting up a preamp… but it is a really good streamer. So it excels at isolation, not passing on noise… making up for any network deficiencies… etc. get a really good streamer and it takes care of the hassles. 

glad you are getting good sound, but wifi is pretty limited - it may not support the highest rates (upsampling, etc.) and will certainly demand bigger buffers (more delay and some associated issues). If you can hard wire via ethernet.  Wifi is also very noisy (radiation, impact on ground plane noise).  A streamer cannot improve sound, but in the chain from source to DAC, there are plenty of places to create trouble - compression, ground noise, drops, etc.