It's time to do it! Please, your help....

I have been using a home built PC for a few years now and have never even thought of a network player as what I have is as good and a lot better than most. Most importantly you have to put very good components in it. Use a good gaming board with your main drive split between an OS on one partition and the playback of files on another partition of the same SSD Drive ( Very Important ). Platter drives are fine for storage but SSD's are much better for playback as they are better dither wise. You will need to buy a couple of J Play cards to replace the motherboard USB and Ethernet ports. Also for those two drives you will need a Linear Power Supply as a switching supply from the normal PC supply just won't cut it. The operating system I would suggest would be Windows 10 Pro 10 which has a lot of the annoying Windows apps cut out of it . After that you need a program like fidelizer or Audiophile Optimiser (my preference). The most important thing in computer music systems is getting the Dither down as low as you can and those two cards are great for that and also J Play make a great desktop player which I recommend and also use. Good luck and in the end you should have a system that can stand up to most.

Though not Mac, Intel NUC's have been getting good press.

Google John Darko, he has a very good tutorial. -That is, if you wish to persue it.

B

Thank you one and all! It looks like a used Bluesound Vault is in my future. At least I already have a good quality outboard DAC for it.

Happy Holidays and all the best in the New Year!

Howie G

Another option to consider is https://www.smallgreencomputer.com/. They specialize in computer based music servers and players that come preconfigured.

Hello Howie G in NYC!  If you haven't bought the Bluesound Vault yet, there are certainly cheaper ways to go. I have been using PCs (desktops & laptops) for years for recording and playing sound recordings. I have used many DACs and never had a problem with odd noises or bad sound. The software you use to play the music is important. I use WavePad and Media Monkey. Both have free versions. Either is much better than Microsoft's sound players. Keep the software's player at full volume and use a DAC with a volume control. The USB cable is CRITICAL and there are HUGE differences between them. Contact me for more on my discovery of this sad fact. My best results are with Wireworld's best and Furutech's best. Some well advertised products make the music shriek! Unbelievable! The old style USB cables that worked fine on our printers will NOT do audio. Get a great cable first. It's much cheaper. Happy Listening!