In your price range Small Green Computer servers and Sonore Renderers work very well. Get ROON. It is great. Stretch your budget as much as possible. You can get a server with a built in ripper or use an external drive. You can get onboard storage up to 8 TB SSD or just 2 TB. If you have questions, Andrew at SGC can guide you. I am presently using their top of the line which cost me about $8K. They have great set-ups for $2500. Innouous and Wolf are also great choices. Use optical isolation to reduce noise......See their websites
Best Digital Music Server
I am looking for opinions of the "best" digital music server considering the following:
1) CD ripping capability/available formats
2) User Interface - I am crazy from trying to ID "Unknown Albums", dropped first tracks, missing album art, etc. on my PC.
3) HiRes (is Sony's technology -as an example - audibly different?) capability.
4) Streaming flexibility - not a big part of my listening experience, but getting bigger all the time it seems.
5) Last but not least - SOUND QUALITY. I have a reasonably nice DAC (DA2) built into my McIntosh MC2700 PreAmp, so would prefer a '"no internal DAC" solution, but open to it if all the other rankings say buy it anyway.
Thank you in advance for your opinions!
Mark
1) CD ripping capability/available formats
2) User Interface - I am crazy from trying to ID "Unknown Albums", dropped first tracks, missing album art, etc. on my PC.
3) HiRes (is Sony's technology -as an example - audibly different?) capability.
4) Streaming flexibility - not a big part of my listening experience, but getting bigger all the time it seems.
5) Last but not least - SOUND QUALITY. I have a reasonably nice DAC (DA2) built into my McIntosh MC2700 PreAmp, so would prefer a '"no internal DAC" solution, but open to it if all the other rankings say buy it anyway.
Thank you in advance for your opinions!
Mark