I have almost 1000 CD’s of everything but taking music, more than 1/2 classical.
The purpose is to put all the cd’s on an external SSD and play them using an audio music player on the computer. This would save massive space, make it portable, and make finding a selection much easier. Optimally, I would simply like play them from across the room using my late 2013 quad core 2.6 ghz macbook pro.
But... I’m not willing to spend $2000+ just to get a wifi or blue tooth connection between my pre-amp and my macbook pro. The MBP has thunderbolt, usb 3.0, HDMI, and of course the headphone output, but the headphone output is also a digital output.
For $300, I can buy a used 13 inch core 2 duo with optical output and hard wire connect it to my hi-fi system, doing the above.
I’m not sure whether my questions was answered because when I looked up the items listed(I’m not sure what they do) their prices far exceeded the price of a used 13 inch MBP and a couple of two terabyte SSD’s.
You should look into high res music. If you feel your system is revealing you'll certainly notice a benefit in this. Learn how to compress your music files into the lossless flac format if you don't know how already. A bit perfect extractor that can convert the music directly from the CD to flac (or any other format) is EAC or Exact Audio Copy. Free software and the best thing out there for the purpose.
Using a NUC with wifi will cost you around $500. Add a 10GB external drive via USB to it. Don't use SSD. They introduce more electrical noise than your standard spinning platter discs. They are also much more expensive at the higher capacities.
You can install software directly on the NUC that can stream the music to your DAC. I don't think you mentioned having a DAC so if you don't that could change this entire conversation.
I would recommend using Roon as your player/library software. Otherwise JRiver. You limit yourself with iTunes.
