MOVING TO computer/HD/audio player from CD's

The conversion to digital with a large HDD or SSD, a good DAC, iTunes or a clone,  and connections from the PC to the Pre-amp was never the issue.  I can do that in lots of different ways.  

The control from the listening position was what I was trying to drive toward.    I suspect that it might be possible with a separate wifi adapter on a NUC broadcast from my Mac, but being able at the same time surf the internet and do what I do on the pac while listening is probably a no-go.  The Mac can’t be both a receiver and a transmitter at the same time.  

OK... maybe I wasn’t clear in what I have, and where I want to go.  It may also be that I am so far behind the times(I’m 70 yers old), that I don’t understand what you are talking about.

I have a rather high end line array speaker system.  Each size has 25 mid ranges, 15 tweeters, one 8 inch mid woofer, one 12 inch sub woofer.  This is connected to a analog electronic crossover running a separate amplifier for the tweeters, mid ranges, mid woofers, and sub woofer.  Each of the  six amplifiers(one for each side, for each group) are 100 watts, and a 350 RMS watt per channel amp for the woofers. Turn it on Playing Organ, and you will think you are in the church as there is no distortion.  This is connected to a pre-amp which currently connects to a CD player and an FM Tuner. 

I’m listening online, and burning CD’s from a subscription service called PrimePhonic which streams at 24 bit, 44Khz.  

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.  

I think it would be easier to run a cable across the floor to my MBP connecting to a reasonable quality DAC behind the pre-amp.  No one listens to speakers like I have, and so anything less than 16bit,  44khz, is clearly audible on my system.    It seems that the easiest thing to do is to keep using CD’s since I’m not willing to pay more than $2000 for the convenience of transferring music 10 feet away.  

An Intel NUC© is the same as a Mac Mini.  You can pick up an old one for about $139, with a digital optical output, which you would have to run into a dedicated DAC to go into the pre-amp.  You would need two 2-terabyte HDD’s(one for back in the safety deposit box), a small keyboard and mouse, and very small 7 inch screen(like they use in camera equipment).  With all the equipment it would cost between $400 and $700 depending on how much you paid for the external DAC, and the mac mini.  Since you can use screen sharing on both the Macbook Pro and iPhone(via Bluetooth 2 or wifi), you could run it from anywhere in the house, or even around the world.  It would give the best options in regard to quality of output to the pre-amp.  

Looking at this, I don’t think I’m quite ready to digitize for my system yet.  I’ll stick with CD’s for the moment and reorganize them.

Thanks everyone for their help to focus me on what I could do if I was so inclined.  

I decided that Sanity would prevail.  I completely re-organized my CD, and put them in a Ninox Database.

But I also found another alternative.  I subscribed to the classical service PrimePhonic which streams at 24bit. I dl’d the app also for my iPhone, and discovered that the quality if music streamed from the iPhone via Lightning cable into the Tape input of my amplifier is clearly as good quality as my CD’s, and the dynamic range is enormous.  And so in addition to listening to my CD’s, dl-ing new recordings from Prime Phonic, I can also listen to nearly anything in the major label classical catalogue.  At the moment I am listening to Swan Lake off my iPhone to the system.

And the cost is such that, if I had gone digital, I could have Primephonic for more than 10 years for the cost of the equipment I would have had to buy to avoid the poor quality problems.