Travel similar road as @ghdprentice. Still buy vinyl .....rarely. have hundreds of ripped CDs and play them ......rarely. Stream most of the time.
Better music player alternative to Mac Air / laptop
I am currently using Apple Macbook Air and/or Ms. Window based laptop as the hardware player, and pairing either “Foobar 2000” or “VLC” with the Mac/laptop for music playing. I prefer Mac Air to laptop because it has no fan. I collect lawful 16/24 bits, 44.1/88.2 khz flac and good recordings from Youtube and store them in a solid state drive as the source.
Although I felt the noise floor from this combination is quite dark and satisfactory, I am open to a possibly “cleaner” music player alternative/device (with display preferrably) than my current Apple Mac/laptop that the audiophiles continuously claim to be “dirty.” The “player” may include both hardware and software because the software I am currently using may not be able to run on the new device. I heard Mac Mini is a good choice so please share your experience if you had it. I do not stream and I do not intend to invest in the streamer in the near future. Thank you.