High end streamer/server profound choice

Lucas Audio Lab can custom build a roon server/streamer to your system and budget.  He’ll also support you in optimizing it with updates in perpetuity. I have a lower end one ($3800) and will not be upgrading it again anytime soon.  Very honest, competent guy.  No bullshit.

Dac remains separate, horrifying to embed a dac inside a network player. 
Problem i have is being jerked around with all the separate pieces, and then replacing and adjusting and in the end never quite achieving your goal and ending up spending more with lots of equipment stting idle in boxes as its not worth it to sell.

so buy a quality reference piece that will achieve an exceptional result and wont look like a hodgepodge of boxes scattered all over.  I think we can combine the various pieces relating to players and servers.  Harder to do with amps, processors, dacs and stereo preamps, which should all be separate.  Integrated only makes sense if u live in manhattan. 

@jumia - I also came to the same conclusion to simplify rather than have all those boxes and cables.  However, I'll still get an audiophile ethernet switch for the sonic uptick.  

You can spend big money on a lovely streaming/server box with great user experience and great sound potential, but unless you invest significantly in optimising and cleaning the Ethernet feed to it, you won’t hear its full sonic potential.

My own server is many box, but if a good one box solution is in your budget, I could see that being very worthwhile.

A long time ago, as computer audio was heating up around here, someone said they didn't want to import computer headaches in their audio room.

That's always stuck with me; while I absolutely don't regret going down the computer audio road, the computer grief -- eg, going to listen and needing to reboot everything -- is serious aggravation. Enough at work!


Do the one box solutions substantially mitigate that?