Takedown of pricey servers, streamers OCD HiFi guy

8 gb of memory and most any modern cpu will do the job just fine at least for cd resolution audio streaming. 

a music server is just another computer application. Has nothing go to do with making sound. Just serving up files from storage like any other program.


The streamer is where things start to get interesting. The streamer takes the data from the files served up by the server and produces the digital electric signal that the DAC then uses to produce the music in real time. Streamers can have an effect on the sound quality but in practice it may be hard to tell.

The DAC is by far the biggest factor in practice regarding the end sound quality in the digital streaming pipeline.
Keeping jitter to a minimum is key for good sound quality. The wire connection from streamer to DAC can also play a part in regards to jitter levels into the DAC as a result of signal reflections.

Also noise in the circuit that makes it into the signal from streamer to DAC may also have an effect. I like wireless connections from server to streamer for that reason...isolation for the music making components from the wired computer network. Wired circuits can be very prone to noise. Won’t hurt the computer programs that run on it but might hurt the music making process if it makes it’s way into the circuit between streamer and dac.

It’s true a music server is just a computer doing a job that is not very hard.
I got mine of Amazon for about $250 plus another couple hundred for 2tb storage and backup storage. It doubles as my at home work computer. I listen to it all the time and the sound is top notch off any of my systems that use it.