Giving up on Itunes! Alternatives? I want to run my hardrive with a dedicated tablet.


After having my archives completely disorganized by itunes once again i’m throwing in the towel. I want to know everything about setting up a Tablet as a player for my digital music on a remote hard drive so i can do it right the first time.
I want a simple player (not Itunes) that can handle all file types, I have everything from mp3’s to lossless cd rips, over a thousand albums, not looking to spend alot of money, I work on my own equipment.
Lots of newbie questions! Why a dac? is there any real benefit or is this just a way to get people to spend more money. seems like this is more for av equipment? Cables? What are the benefits in terms of fidelity, should i be using usb to run my system? I’m currently running my digital through .999 silver minijack to rca and it definitely picks up noise from a computer or phone power cord and case. Seems like a lot of newer digital equipment gets signals pretty dirty, but i don’t know anything about it.
What kind of tablet, any fidelity drawbacks as far as this goes? I use Macs but don’t care if It’s an Ipad or whatever, just want the best sound, least interference. Does the material of the cables connecting the tablet to the hardrive or dac have an effect on sound?My system; It’s a pretty crazy set up of whatever I could get my hands on, predominately set up for vinyl but I have a huge collection of rare albums on digital and would like to begin archiving from vinyl. I’m running a Dynaco St70 (tube) through a dynaco pat5 (ss), JBL’s, all plugs are rca, solid silver interconnects, no shielding, ferrite beads.
The sonic qualities that are important to me are imaging and range, don’t want to sacrifice the extreme highs and lows to rule out a little emf interference, my amp is ancient anyway. You know, the vinyl sound. Please give me all the help and advice you can, brutal honesty preffered! There are just too many opinions and too much unhelpful information out there to wade through, just want to get started with something simple that sounds good. Not into expensive toys just listening to great sounding music!
eviesevielevie
Nice, thanks, definitely getting some real info now that's helping me understand what I'm getting into. itsjustme and djones51, I really appreciate the tehnical info and understanding, its great to have the advice of someone who has really invested time and energy in these things, so that i don't have to!Checked out audirvana and roon, i'm not about to spend $700 on software, you could get a lot of great records for that or a new preamp, or a lot of good beer, or a motorcycle! Maybe audirvana, anyone tried doing listening tests on the same system with these different players. Any players with notable cataloguing issues i should watch out for?
Those specs on the dacs are great, it really looks like there's plenty of dacs on the low price end that perform comparably to the best of them, i'm sure there are other factors as well...I'd definitely like to hear more peoples  experience trying and actually testing different players, what they think is best and why. I can't keep using itunes because of the cataloguing issues. Thanks for all the info, please keep it coming.

Oh yeah, maybe I didn't make it clear enough but i don't listen to streaming music or listen to music wirelessly in multiple rooms or at all. I'm not looking for any devices designed to do this or streaming services, definitely not looking for home entertainment gear, this is for a stereo.Lms is for streaming your music to your devices right? Would I use it just as a player? Any differences in sound quality between foobar and audirvana? Between audirvana and itunes with bitperfect?
Also I was thinking of the tablet for navigation purposes. Isn't it difficult to navigate a library with hundreds or thousands of albums on a phone screen? Or no?