You can do much better by spending more than $2500 for a dac. $2500 buys you a mid-fi dac. The best dacs are of the FPGA type which costs more and you get upgrades that improve the SQ 1 or 2 times a year for free. Also, the better dacs have Ethernet network connections.
Also, you don’t need a dedicated music server for a number of reasons:
1: you don’t want any kind of server in your audio room
2: you don’t want to use USB to any dac, it is a flawed connection
your Mac mini is fine running Roon, just place the server in a different room and connect to your dac by Ethernet, keep it simple and provides the best SQ
Also, you don’t need a dedicated music server for a number of reasons:
1: you don’t want any kind of server in your audio room
2: you don’t want to use USB to any dac, it is a flawed connection
your Mac mini is fine running Roon, just place the server in a different room and connect to your dac by Ethernet, keep it simple and provides the best SQ