I don’t know if this is useful since your requirements are specific and don’t match mine exactly but here’s the setup that works well for me.
All my music is on the internal hard drive of an iMac in my office and managed with iTunes, mostly AIFF and Apple Lossless with a fair number of mp3s, as well. From the iMac I can listen to systems in my office, living room and garage simultaneously.
For the main system in the living room, the music is streamed from the iMac over WiFi to an Apple Extreme router and connected to an Arcam rPlay streamer with an Ethernet cable. The rPlay has an internal DAC but I use its digital coax output to go to a Wyred4Sound DAC with analog output to my integrated amp. The rPlay will accept the WiFi signal directly but since my router is just a few feet away I use the Ethernet connection simply for reliability, though I’ve never had any issues with my WiFi setup.
Before I got the rPlay I was streaming to an Apple TV and using its optical output to the DAC but the new setup sounds dramatically better, as good as music from a Simaudio CD player connected directly to the other coax input in the DAC.
The rPlay will handle streaming from Tidal, Qobuz and other sources but I stream only Spotify at the moment. I’m extremely pleased with its simplicity, sonic quality and cost effectiveness.
https://www.arcam.co.uk/products,rSeries,Music-Streamer,rPlay.htm
All my music is on the internal hard drive of an iMac in my office and managed with iTunes, mostly AIFF and Apple Lossless with a fair number of mp3s, as well. From the iMac I can listen to systems in my office, living room and garage simultaneously.
For the main system in the living room, the music is streamed from the iMac over WiFi to an Apple Extreme router and connected to an Arcam rPlay streamer with an Ethernet cable. The rPlay has an internal DAC but I use its digital coax output to go to a Wyred4Sound DAC with analog output to my integrated amp. The rPlay will accept the WiFi signal directly but since my router is just a few feet away I use the Ethernet connection simply for reliability, though I’ve never had any issues with my WiFi setup.
Before I got the rPlay I was streaming to an Apple TV and using its optical output to the DAC but the new setup sounds dramatically better, as good as music from a Simaudio CD player connected directly to the other coax input in the DAC.
The rPlay will handle streaming from Tidal, Qobuz and other sources but I stream only Spotify at the moment. I’m extremely pleased with its simplicity, sonic quality and cost effectiveness.
https://www.arcam.co.uk/products,rSeries,Music-Streamer,rPlay.htm