Best standalone music server?

@ctsooner
As always your posts are refreshing and well thought out and always of interest to myself.
I would say that on this venture I limited myself on how much I wanted to spend on the music server as it was my first foray, just like my very first amp cost a whole $25...lol.
I am sure like the rest of the components that in time I will get the urge to explore and go higher both in quality and price, not that they always go hand in hand!
But yes for now I have EXACTLY what I asked for and sound quality of ripped files and Tidal have surpassed my admitedly fairly low expectations. Only previous experience of digital was my daughters itunes and Pandora played through the smarttv connected by optical digital connection.

And yes Juke, in my system I definitely noticed a huge difference going dig out of the vault instead of rca so if you did go with a vault I would not judge it entirely by its rca performance until you had opportunity to try the digital outputs. As of yet I have not tried the usb out bar for backing up the hard drive so no idea what the sound quality is like over the usb port.

The words are too kind, but also realize that I'm just one person.  Trust your ears, but when you learn to listen you can hear distortions that really do take away from the music.  Many never get there and it's fairly easy to see when reading some posts on boards.  NO big deal as long as they love their music  Heck, I can spend a day listening to crappy recordings of 80's rock and have my ears killing me.  Just love the music.  

What I may suggest to you eventually is to look into a Melco as a streamer/NAS and then get a nice DAC like a Codex or equivalent to your ears.  Then you can more easily upgrade as you grow.  You can then sell your Vault and only lose half, but half of that is less than half of an Aurender or Melco or whatever.  

One reason I like the Melco over the Aurender (other than I like the sound better) is because if you update your DAC to one that's say Roon end point and also a top streamer and headphone amp (Like the Ayre QX5 I just purchased), then you can still use the Melco as it's by far the best NAS I"ve heard and even Michael Lavorgna of Audiostream (I pray you are over there enjoying his writing) has said that and that's his job.  

Honestly, with what you have now, I wouldn't do anything else just yet. Get comfortable with it and learn to use it to it's fullest.  Listen at times critically and see what you enjoy about the sound of it.  You will soon notice trends in the sound on various cuts.  Then you can learn what you DON'T want next time in any piece you get in your system.  

To me audio is just like the second wife (or more)....you need to know what you DON'T want, as you never fully know what you do want.  Just think about that and take it for what it's worth.  You can and probably will do other upgrades in your system before doing more with the source. Oh, and don't bother with other cables or power cords or anything right now.  At the level you are at, it's so silly to spend even 100 for a power cord when you could spend that eventually in component upgrades that will make a much much bigger difference.  JMHO

I looked for an all in one solution that i could rip my 500 plus CD's into, had the ability to stream MQA from Tidal etc and that could be combined with 'Roon' software...I went for the Bluesound Vault and could not be happier, it also streams to multiple airplay system's set-up in different rooms of the house. Obviously the Airplay quality is not as good as hires/mqa but it's fine for background music when needed. 

Forgive my technical inexperience but I’m in a similar position. I have a modest system with:
-Yamaha 1060 AVR (used as preamp w/HT ability)
-Parasound A23 Halo

I want to add Rune and a have a something that can manage my digital content either Tidal/Spotify or MP3s. My Yamaha AVR can handle streaming services but not Tidal yet AFAIK? I don’t need the ability to rip CDs as I have an external HD full of them and prefer the portability of having external HDs. Can I get a Bluesound Node 3 and connect my HD to it via USB and then connect it via digital coax to my AVR and have all I need to run Rune and manage everything? From what I understand the Node3 is just a Vault2 without the ability to rip and built-in storage? One other thing, for my MP3s to work on our iPhones/iPads I need my files in AIFF form not FLAC correct? As I get more MP3s, I want the best quality I can for our devices.

Thanks for any advice or input.

You should go to their site again and get to know what each piece can do.  I"ve seen many systems using the Bluenote gear without the Vault as they already have a large NAS drive they use with it.