If you had to pick a laptop or mini-PC, which one?

I always use external storage as I'm not sure if I lose sound quality or not with the USB cable. I always allow for extra storage as new items come into my collection and I continue ripping my cd collection.As a rule of thumb If you have 1 Terabyte at the moment I would buy 2 Terabytes of external storage as a minimum. I also have a 2nd copy of everything I rip or store just incase 1 fails I have a backup. I use a NAS Raid system .plugged into my NUC.

Pjr

Almost sound like your in IT... we have a common phrase; backup, backup, backup and; Did you backup today? Did you?
All my media is on a second drive then I backup to a second pc then to a external via bat file, bada bing bada boom. People may say its excessive but that first time you lose everything... even if you still have it on CD your looking at weeks, months to rip it all again.

Yes storage always double what you currently need, at least.

I would be curious to know about any lose of sound quality over usb, is your Nuc connected by hdmi? Could you have the same song on the Nuc then play over usb and hdmi and compare?
In the last few days I have revisited playing over DLNA. I currently have my Nuc connected to my pre by hdmi, the Nuc is running Plex. I wanted to compare so tried it from my Oppo using Dlna and preamp using Dlna. Unfortunately there is some improvement, I say unfortunately because over Dlna I lose the nice browsing and playing on the tv experience with Plex.

i started with thinkpad as source then lenovo tiny pc / lps then built my own mitx pc / lps.  each is an improvement.

Intel Nuc from Mitx pc?

That is where I got mine, could have given you a contact. 

So you are liking it? I've had mine a couple of years, I am going to build another custom in a Full Atx case to replace it.