Thanks Steph, I thought you were further on, but I'll share my thoughts for anyone interested. My interest was caught primarily by the scale of material available, rather than audio quality, which might not seem important but ultimately informed choices. I was fortunate to be invited to a three hour demo and listening experience of streaming. It seems that there are three or possibly four levels of audio quality, at the bottom MP3, think Spotify, which in all honesty and for the majority of users is quite adequate. Next is CD 44.1 kHz and indeed from my own listening perfectly acceptable. Associated is FLAC streams which are CD with the bits that are normally left out by a CD player included. Finally Hi Res. It becomes apparently obvious that the incremental gain in sound quality at each step diminishes, whilst the cost of moving to the next highest quality exponentially expands.
I could quite clearly hear step changes but above FLAC the eye watering cost didn't commend itself, so CD plus was the basic choice but in consideration that the recently acquired Quad pre amp had digital inputs with a high quality DAC, a box to convert internet 0s and 1s to digital audio 0s and 1s was needed. I looked at the Moon Mind, no DAC, but at £1700 was a rather expensive digital converter, and as alluded previously the CA CXN was less expensive at £800 but gave me one set of redundant DACs. So I was steered towards the Sonos connect, wifi in and digital audio out with an App that works for £350. I have to say it works, and well, at least as far as my ageing ears can detect.
Two issues, I had to move the hub from the study at the front of the house to somewhere in the middle, to get adequate wifi coverage. I've no doubt wired ethernet would be a major improvement. but thus far wifi hasn't been an issue. Network speed is though, I get my internet from BT, it's basic because BT won't offer me anything else, and the alternatives require digging up the front garden. The result is that whilst it can cope with MP3 and CD, FLAC runs out of buffer, especially in the evening. If your digits are on fibre you'll almost certainly have no problem.
Finally a word about sources. There are only two suppliers who will offer CD or better, Qobuz and Tidal. I'm trying out Quobuz on a 30 day freebie, which is interesting, they are a French company which lends the library a Gallic feel, most of what you would expect is there but there are some surprising omissions, k d lang for one. The UI works but it could be so much better. I have yet to try Tidal which is American which will give a different approach, but they appear to be on shaky financial ground. Ideally the Spotify front end with CD quality or better would be ideal.
This has been interesting and will develop further.
Regards
Martin