Best Digital Music Server

What’s your budget?

I use a Naim Uniti Core, I don’t have the patience to rip a couple of thousand CDs with EAC or DBpoweramp, I’ve one disc the Core refused that ripped on EAC but with errors. With the Naim app the Core won’t solve the unknown albums problem but it’s Roon ready so maybe that would help, I’ve stuck with the app and never tried Roon. I tend to play whole albums so editing an unknown album’s title and performer is often enough for me and a search a few months later can turn up the metadata that didn’t make the data bases before I bought the disc. It too often identifies an individual disc as from a boxed set, which is a pain but mostly sortable, I suspect this is down to available databases than anything specifically Naim. Discs of classical music from several composers are tricky to catalogue using the Naim app, it could do with a catalogued/searchable field to add composers present on the disc other than under title or performer.
My wife likes to select tracks and struggles with the app whether setting up a play queue or playlist, hit the wrong item and the track you wanted to add to the end of the queue plays next or worse the whole thing collapses.
The Core has a linear ps with a smps used only when in standby mode, I was impressed with its performance via SPdif feeding a DAC, I found a Belden 4794R (from Bluejeans) outperformed some considerably more expensive cables for that but it’s BNC both ends so needs an adaptor for some poorly equipped DACs. It will serve it’s own rips and music found on your network but Naim use the streamers for accessing Tidal, Qobuz etc. I used Rega-r and Chord 2qute DACs, the Rega needed a BNC to RCA adaptor with that cable but managed to convey a lot of emotion from the music. I found the Chord too clinical so even though it’s more resolving I stuck with the Rega while I waited for Naim to launch the replacement for their NDS and now use an ND555.

Oh and the Core only rips to FLAC or WAV the latter using a proprietary linked database for metadata. You have to choose, WAV has slightly better sound, FLAC is more portable, the Core doesn’t transcode. There have been a few firmware updates since launch and transcoding was meant to be on the cards but there’s been no sign of it.

Any Innuos model: easy setup and squeezebox software, fantastic SQ

My budget is $1000 to $3000 depending on capabilities/performance.  I am not averse to building a silent, purpose-built PC (currently running on an HT PC I built 5+ years ago) IF I can find an excellent UI to go with it.