MOVING TO computer/HD/audio player from CD's

You have a number of options using an iPhone or iPad and appropriate control app. For example, Audirvana has a nice companion remote app. I haven't used Apple's Remote app in years but it worked well with iTunes. JRiver has theirs. Stratospherix MusicStreamer app is different beast altogether, allowing you to avoid using other players. I used it for quite some time .. simple and robust using Apple's share technology:

https://www.stratospherix.com/products/musicstreamer/

An Intel NUC© is the same as a Mac Mini.  You can pick up an old one for about $139, with a digital optical output, which you would have to run into a dedicated DAC to go into the pre-amp.  You would need two 2-terabyte HDD’s(one for back in the safety deposit box), a small keyboard and mouse, and very small 7 inch screen(like they use in camera equipment).  With all the equipment it would cost between $400 and $700 depending on how much you paid for the external DAC, and the mac mini.  Since you can use screen sharing on both the Macbook Pro and iPhone(via Bluetooth 2 or wifi), you could run it from anywhere in the house, or even around the world.  It would give the best options in regard to quality of output to the pre-amp.  

Looking at this, I don’t think I’m quite ready to digitize for my system yet.  I’ll stick with CD’s for the moment and reorganize them.

Thanks everyone for their help to focus me on what I could do if I was so inclined.  

MOVING TO computer/HD/audio player from CD’s

I decided that continuing to increased my 1000 CD record collection was so 1940’s.

Don’t sell off your cd’s, I’ve had two friends who did this to fund "computer audio" and after some time chopping/changing trying to be satisfied with it, wanted to go back to cd so much they are now both musically grief stricken.
They have given away being audiophiles and become reclusive to anything to do with audio, SERIOUSLY!

Looking at this, I don’t think I’m quite ready to digitize for my system yet. I’ll stick with CD’s for the moment and reorganize them.

Sanity prevails.

Cheers George

I decided that Sanity would prevail.  I completely re-organized my CD, and put them in a Ninox Database.

But I also found another alternative.  I subscribed to the classical service PrimePhonic which streams at 24bit. I dl’d the app also for my iPhone, and discovered that the quality if music streamed from the iPhone via Lightning cable into the Tape input of my amplifier is clearly as good quality as my CD’s, and the dynamic range is enormous.  And so in addition to listening to my CD’s, dl-ing new recordings from Prime Phonic, I can also listen to nearly anything in the major label classical catalogue.  At the moment I am listening to Swan Lake off my iPhone to the system.

And the cost is such that, if I had gone digital, I could have Primephonic for more than 10 years for the cost of the equipment I would have had to buy to avoid the poor quality problems.