My 2p
This was exactly my requirement i chose the Naim Uniti Atom headphone edition
Now 3 months in its sounding even better
I am using Sennheiser HD800 with a balanced cable. Incidentally the back XLR cable works for me as the unit is in a shelf unit with back entry
Certainly a recommendation
I run my headphones through a Naim Uniti Atom Headphone Edition through Roon.
Function and sound are stable and very good.
Thorsten.
I used the matrix mini pro3 too to drive my utopia’s … .worked great.
Definitely leaning toward Matrix.
Thanks for the ideas folks!
Cheers,
Robert
Darko.Audio has been exploring low cost streaming rigs this fall. Visit https://darko.audio/ and poke around.
Team Chord Mojo (Poly). Fantastic so far. And very portable too. And half the Prize of the Matrix.
Good to hear from someone saying positive things about the Poly! 
Love my mojo poly. Great with an SD card too.
What do you mean? It’s not a battery wonder, but works fine for me since two years now.
Exactly what i wrote! Most times i have read about the Poly it has been complaints of bad software, instability, lack of support for 5Ghz WLAN etc…
So, it was good to hear from someone who is happy with the device!
I had the same question and chose a Hugo 2/2go for a nightstand rig. Being transportable, it’s also my home office/kitchen table/sofa/back porch rig 
The 2go streamer does wifi or ethernet and it’s battery powered or USB micro so it’s easy to move from one room to another. Sounds great and will drive about any headphones.
Mojo/poly is probably a better choice if you want to leave the house with it.
Bryston BR20. Amazing!
I still say RPi4 with RopieeeXL and a Cobalt DAC.
Currently set up (Ropieee) in my living room and sounds good to my ears.
RPi4 allows swapping out Micro SD cards and software changes a piece of Pi…
I appreciate the input folks, but the thread has clearly strayed from the requirements significantly. Please read the original post.
Suggestions of multibox solutions, DIY and full sized preamplifiers are off the table, literally.
What wasn’t included in the original post was that there is also zero need for portability, so on-the-go DACs and the like are not interesting.
One smallish streamer/DAC (Roon compatible) that is also a quality headphone amp, capable of driving a wide variety of headphones, not IEMs.
Anyway, I’m pretty much looking only at the Gold Note and the Matrix offerings, everything else appears unsuitable either to task or to my taste.
Cheers,
Robert
I feel my recommendation met your requirements. With a dragon tail, the Cobalt can be neatly attached to the side and look innocuous.
A RPi4 is a computer just as a NUC and any other streamer FWIW.
The Cobalt can drive 16 to 300ohm headphones.
Unofficial measurements suggest Cobalt’s clipping point is -3dBFS with 300Ω ‘phones and -6dBFS with 30Ω ‘phones, output voltages of around 1.6Vrms and 1.05Vrms respectively. AQ recommends using headphones with an impedance no lower than 16Ω.
I have a Teac NT-505 and I love it. They come in two tastes now, with AKM and ESS chipsets. What I particularly like is that it automatically switches input to bluetooth when my kids point their Spotify-apps at them. In daily use it is set to my Roon library via ethernet.
I believe this is a direct reply to TS as requested. The NT-505 is also a capable headphone amp and pre-amp. And it is small.
Waversa WminiHPA MK2
Kopfhörerverstärker, Vorverstärker, D/A-Wandler und Streamer
Lautstärkegeregelte Analogausgänge
Symmetrischer 2,5-mm-Kopfhörerausgang
Je ein 3,5-mm- und 6,3-mm-Kopfhörerausgang
Roon Ready, DLNA, AirPlay, MQA, WNDR
Streaming über LAN
NAS-Funktion mit USB-Speicher
WAP (Waversa Audio Processor)
Take a look at the brand new Rose unit . Pretty neat .
Which brand new Hifi Rose product do you mean?
Headphone amps included in the RS150 and RS250 aren’t very powerful and also I don’t know what the output impedance is.
For serious headphone listening, you need (I’m owning also a RS250) an external headphone amp.
As per my post over on this thread: “Headphones thread (show us yer cans)! [2021-01]”, there is a minimalist champ in town. Namely the Focal Bathys headphones. As you can see from the picture below all that is needed to stream from Roon is an iPhone, the iPhone USB camera adapter and a USB-A to USB-C cable. The Bathys have a built in DAC and when connected as shown in the photo below the iPhone will output digital audio up to 192kHz and 24bit into the Bathys.
Sure this arrangement limits one to these devices, however the Bathys are really quite nice sounding and like I stated earlier this is truly the most minimal setup available.
