Is there a Music Player for this?


I'm looking for a quality music player without a built-in DAC or hard drive for the music files. So, a hard drive for just the operating system is fine. I want to store my music files on an external hard drive using either an eSATA or Firewire connection to the music server. And, I want to use either a coaxial, optical, BNC, or AES connection between my DAC and music server. I also need to use my iPad as the controller.
kennythekey
Sounds like you are describing the Bryston digital players, BDP-1 ($2200) and BDP-2 ($3000).
Getting the best result from this requires that you use USB, not S/PDIF, and force the Master Clock outside the server in a USB converter. There are at least 2 servers that output music streams over USB, Antipodes and Sonore.

A good USB converter is the Off-Ramp 5 with Dynamo power supply. Avg jitter in the 30psec range.

Steve N.
Empirical Audio