Nice to see the Levellers featuring in a post!
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I can’t comment directly on core & nd555 but the compression used in streaming is lossless (usually the files are packed as flac which operates rather like zip on a computer). Certainly with roon it will make no audible difference if the file came from quobuz or your hard drive given the exact same correctly ripped cd. However its is quite likely to be a different mastering anyway and so sound slightly different.
I don’t think that’s right to be honest. You can forget about compression/decompression. I think most people expressing a view here say that providing you get the right version of the recording on Tidal or Qobuz, the sound quality is about the same as the Core.
But it’s what works for you that is important. Personally I like having music on my Core but I probably listen to as much streamed as I do played from the Core. I can’t say I notice any difference in sound quality.
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To my old ears, and some younger ones, Core into NDX2/XPSDR was indistinguishable from a good stream. Using the ND555 instead seems unlikely to shift the balance in favour of the Core. If thinking of buying, it would be easy to compare and make up one’s own mind of course.
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I meant to add here at the time (but got distracted because my ds needed reconfiguring to remove the digital volume control that had somehow defaulted to on with utopik) I assumed that all the usual precautions would need be taken to minimise rf or em noise into the streamer e.g. getting the core computer behind a couple of switches and preferably in another room, no power cables touching the ethernet cable etc.
At home I run the last leg power over ethernet (poe) to a dedicated switch and my hifi is on its own dedicated electrical circuit. And my hp server is 4 switches away. All ubiquiti unifi gear. Then whatever you do to the core (or computer alternative) power wise shouldn’t matter. That is all fairly standard advice for starting out with digital audio.