NAS/Streamer or server/player?

I have experience in both.  I had a 4tb Synology NAS tied to a Lumin D-2, then A-1 and then X-1.  From a system perspective, I had my files and tidal and Qobuz so I was happy with the sound and performance.  It was a real nice system.  

Then my whole two-channel system was sold with my house so I started over.  I started with a Lampizator Pacific, a Lumin U-1 mini and my Synology NAS.  I was a tiny bit disappointed so I began researching Music servers.  I came across a UK / Poland company called Lucas Audio LDMS.  I had many conversations with Lucas via What's App and I realized he was a computer genius.  I ordered one of his music servers and it took a long time to get.  However, once I installed it in my system, the results were fantastic.  He loaded all of my music onto his server remotely.  His level of customer service is outstanding and I live in Arizona.  You can get one of his servers at many levels of features and price points.    

So in summary both ways work, but the level of detail you get from the music server was the home run for me.  Good Luck.

P.S. FYI, I recently sold my Preamp and am very happy running the  DAC directly to the Monoblock amps.

For what a Synology will cost you just get a 2T SDD and case. 

It will load almost as fast WiFi and much faster direct.

I used NAS for years and sold it.

Synology mirror raid 4TB, ditto a Netgear…what a royal PITA…. USB SSD or stick gonna rule the world…

This is why I'm obsessive about surge protection.  Protection in the service panel as required by NEC 2020, and protection on all of my sensitive equipment.  My PC's, stereo, even my network gear is ridiculously protected.  It's not just the cost, it's the effort of replacement.  I even use a fiber optic network cable to air-gap the cable modem from my internal Ethernet and Wifi. 

I recommend looking at Aurender. I have pursued high end digital sound since the advent of the CD. After owning an Auralic Aries G2 streamer, and a number of lessor solutions I got a Aurender N100, the sound quality is simply amazing so after auditioning their amazing N10 model $8K (and lots of research)… I can recommend it without qualification. I chose their flagship the W20SE (~$22K). This is all these guys do and have it down to an art. You will find many of them all over audio shows, they are the standard for companies to use unless they make their own. Surprisingly Linn also makes world class streamers..

Typically they come with some internal solid state storage, with options for more. I have NAS… which is accessible… but I just copied it into my Aurrender in case the network is down… I have used it once over the last year as there is no sonic advantage of internally stored files or CDs… so I just use Qobuz.

Aurenders are built without compromise to maximize sound quality. Streamed music in my system now is at the same quality level as my great analog rig (see my systems under my ID). Completely changed what and how I listened to music, since I now have access to nearly infinite music for the price of a CD per month. Their Conductor app for controlling and managing music is great. I have 28tb of storage at home.. no longer use it for music.

I recommend Melco.  It's a great NAS and can also be a server.  It sounded much better than the Synolgy NAS that it replaced

Get a synology NAS and a Sonore or Lumin U1.  Keep it simple.  Both will be a great roon streamer and the NAS should be RAID.  Way under your budget you listed.  

Added a Lumin D2 with Synology Ds918+ NAS and 16TB’s storage in conjunction with Roon Nucleus +.  Liked the Lumin so much I upgraded to the T2 when I added my Audio Research Ref6SE preamp.  With Lumin app you can play Tidal and Qobuz direct into preamp or amp which sounds better than going through Roon. Good luck and let us know what you end up doing. 

The difference here is in how the devices handle their jobs.  The digital front end needs to do a few things.  It needs to access your local files, deal with a very volatile internet and the decompress/unfold your files as it serves data to the DAC.  

The first step managing files and dealing with the internet is very processor intensive.  This is where a server really excels.  

The rendering (decompression/unfold) is far less processor intensive and many manufacturers argue that to much power here introduces noise.  

All of this has to be clocked and synchronized with the clock in the DAC.  

Given these points above, I fall firmly in the server/player camp.  I don't love the pure streamer approach nor do I like a single computer/server approach though I feel a single server outperforms a single streamer, especially at the high end.  

I like splitting things into different parts.  This is what Antipodes does in their higher end servers.  The K30 and K50 have two computers, one that is higher powered than the other.  Another approach is to get a single server (Roon Nucleus, Antipodes S40, Antipodes K41, etc...) and pair it with a Roon Endpoint like a Bricasti M5 or Weiss DSP 501/502.