What will a streamer add?

[Confused]

Sorry for the open question: anyone care to lend any personal experience / advice about streamer choice in 2021?
I am after something to pull in Internet from my home network and stream Qobuz or Tidal to my Devialet (the incredible 1000s)
Ability to connect to an outboard USB drive would be good 4/10
CD player would be good 3/10
Onboard memory / storage would be good 5/10
I quite like the idea of "memory play" ?5/10
Excellent sonics are there MAJOR driver 9/10 ( of course!)
Anyone used anything great lately? I have a couple thousand to play with...
(TOTALLY the other way- am considering building a Pi2AES!!- any experience??)

Noting that you have placed sonics as your 9/10 factor, lets start with that.  To my ears, an Expert sounds best if fed via AES/EBU.  Which is fine, but this immediately restricts your options as most devices in the relatively affordable range support USB only.

So one approach might be to look at "reclocker" type devices with AES/EBU output, and then have a think about what to connect to it to actually deliver music.  In my experience the Mutec MC3+USB works well, and even better with the REF10 clock.  Of course, the REF10 kind of blows the budget, but there are a number of cheaper 10 MHz clocks available now, mainly from the far east with reclaimed 4G clocks and similar.  There are of course many alternatives to the MC3+USB, as covered below:

https://devialetchat.com/Thread-Digital-...w-products

So what to deliver the music to the reclocker?  Maybe the Cambridge CXN V2 might fit the bill?  Although there are plenty of alternatives here, plus it occurs to me that the Cambridge has S/PDIF out, so it might just sound great with a Devialet all on its own.  I do not believe anyone has actually tried one though, or at least I am not aware of anyone who has tried one with a Devialet and posted about the results.

And yes, maybe the Pi2AES will prove to be the killer option, or maybe not.  Who's going to try one first?