Looking for a network player

I would go with the Auralic Aries. It is dedicated to your specs. All other products I can think of have built-in DACs or more. Aries sole purpose is to stream to a DAC.

On the cheaper side of products would include Apple TV & Apple Airport, Google Chromecast. which as far as I know can handle FLAC files.  

What are your thoughts on Bluesound. I see folks have compared bluesound and aries and they seem to like bluesound more....have you had a chance to listen to both? 

Thanks for responding @nevindep

I listened to both a month ago, couldn't tell any difference, I went with the Aeries mini, less expensive, can add hard drive on it, etc.  Works great.

spoutjack, I suggest you look at the Aurender music server models.  For example, the Aurender N100t Music Server.   This unit enables you to store all your ripped CD's on its hard drive for playing using an Apple iPad to control the selection.  I own the Aurender N10 and like it very much.   In addition, the Aurender connects to Tidal Streaming (and Qu Buz) for high quality non-compressed music listening.  Your iPad allows you to easily switch between Tidal streaming and your CD collection.   The Aurender has several different outputs for easy connection to your Asahi Kesei DAC in your Hegel.   

See:

http://www.aurender.com/page/audiophile

Correction.  The Aurender model number is the N100H.  The Aurender N100H digital music player supports DSD (DSF, DFF), WAV, FLAC, ALAC, APE, AIFF, M4A and other major formats at native bit and sampling rates.  It is equipped with a high performance USB digital audio output, Ethernet port, 120GB solid-state drive for cached playback, the N100H is also the ideal solution for playing

high resolution digital music collections from NAS.

The N100H digital music player incorporates many innovations originally developed for the higher priced Aurender S10 and W20 models, including a solid-state drive cache for playback which eliminates  latency and drop-outs from NAS drives. The high performance USB digital audio output was developed using the same engineering as the USB outputs on the flagship Aurender W20. 

Aurender has several models you can choose from depending on your budget and application.   I suggest you review their web site for more information.