For whatever reason, I went and ordered a Wiim Ultra streamer today. A big sale on Amazon knocked $50 off of it.

The laptop that I use as a source has been doing strange Windows stuff as of late, so I figured it was time to move into this decade and do what all of the cool kids are doing.

The plan is to output it to my DAC and go from there.

I might get Qobuz, a year is only $180, I spend that much on music every couple of months, so it might be cheaper???

I also see that I can connect my computer from JRiver through wifi and stream all of what I have already bought through the years.

This cheap Chi-Fi stuff is going to change my ways.

CAJames,
I'm interested in how sound quality will suffer, or possibly, with any luck, stay the same.

Right now I'm going down the rabbit hole of picking a streaming service, Tidal or qobuz.
I was leaning towards qobuz until I queried about the depth of music they have available in my slightly skewed musical taste and it supposedly isn't as deep as I would prefer. It leans heavily into Jazz and Classical, not exactly my cup of tea. Not that it is a bad cup of tea for others, just as I abhor the taste of alcohol or coffee, I have no problems for others to enjoy it.

I've also discovered that I can stream from my collection on my current computers over wi-fi to the Wiim lossless. I see that as a great backup plan.

So now the big question is did I waste $279 just so that I can unhook my laptop from my DAC??

I did just get a email from Amazon that the Wiim is out for delivery, so soon I will figure out if the money was truly wasted.

I don’t have any issues with Qobuz; I have been a subscriber for at least 4-5 years now and they have improved tremendously during this time. I would say my tastes are pretty broad and to date there are only two albums that I want that they don’t have - both extremely obscure.

When people post music on this forum I generally give it a play and I can’t recall a time that a recommendation wasn’t available on Qobuz. To say that Qobuz is slanted towards jazz or classical I think just reflects that both categories have huge discography’s and not that Qobuz favors any particular style of music.

Well I got the Wiim dropped off at my doorstep and hooked it up, and my first impression was the feeling of being kinda disappointed.

The setup of the streamer wasn't too bad other than it started setting up twice on top of itself for some reason, most likely self inflicted.  
Have I mentioned that I truly dislike using my phone as a remote control. Why is it that our TV's keep getting larger and our phone screens keep getting smaller, I don't want a magnifying glass to find music, rant over!

I originally connected the Wiim to my Denafrips DAC with a Wyred 4 Sound "Digital" cable and started streaming from Pandora. Well that sucked hind teat, flat and lifeless. I mean just dead music (no not The Grateful Dead) absolutely no life to it.
OK I thought, Pandora sucks for streaming quality, I knew that already, time to up my game.

So the next thing was to hook up one of my external USB drives to the Wiim.  Well it took a little while for the Wiim to chew through a TB of information on the drive to give me a index of what was on it. Well 2100 albums and 22,790 tracks later I was able to play it.
A considerable improvement was heard, but still not close to what I had from my laptop. So then a new plan was needed.

I had read that the Wiim would work across a connected network, so after a few minutes using AI I was able to connect my computer to the Wiim wirelessly. In fact it was stupid easy to do once I read the instructions that AI gave me. The Wiim's included instructions were somewhere between weak and sucking donkey balls, and much closer to the Jackass end of the spectrum.

So after I did the DLNA connection thing the sound quality took another step in the right way, a fairly big step at that, but still not there.

I only had one more thing to try that the instructions had absolutely no information about, using a USB connection between the streamer and the DAC.  So yet again I went to AI to ask for some sort of information after seeing that there was nothing in the menu about USB output at all.
Well it turns out that the USB output only works once it sees a DAC hooked up to it and then it allows you to connect up to the streamer, weird.

Well once I got that all hashed out the sound quality has finally matched what I was getting from my laptop.
So basically what I have gained so far is untethering my laptop from my DAC.

My next step will be trying out different streaming services to see what one I like. I have a feeling that it will be qobuz but I need to look at what they actually have to offer in Texas songwriter music.
Onward and upward!

I’ve never been known for my popular ideas, Donnie, but if you did all that and got the same SQ you already have with the laptop I’d send the WIIM back and stick with the laptop. You can always stream tidal or Qobuz from your laptop if you want to dip your toes in those waters for more music options.