The Cambridge 851N has a very good quality built in DAC.
I don’t use an external DAC.
It also has a built in bypassable digital pre-amp.
At the moment I have no analogue audio connected and I am using the streamer connected directly to the power amps. So have volume control through the app on my phone as well.
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Thanks all. Ok will start with a NAS and then experiment with streamer/DAC or separates.
Out of interest, has anyone compared Lumin and Auralic units?
I have a Lumin D1 and an Auralic Aries mini. They are both easy to use in terms of the app, although I use Roon so cannot comment too much. The Auralic Aries mini is a stone cold classic bit of kit. I’m happy to recommend both without quibble. At £300ish, if you can find one, the Auralic would be my go to option.
Edit: I use both with a 4TB Inuos Zen rather than a NAS or a USB drive.
At the risk of sounding like even more of a condescending twit than usual, an accurately ripped and well tagged library is more important than the kit that’s going to play it.
IMO anyway.
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I use a NAS with most of my music on it, connected directly to my DAC by USB, and then I just run it from the Synology app on my phone/ipad etc. Super-simple. And then for Spotify/Tidal/whatever, I have a neat little bluetooth receiver with a digital output, that I then have also connected to the DAC, streaming from phone/laptop. DAC is a Jolida Glass FX III, which very handily has three digital inputs, so I can switch between the NAS, the Bluetooth receiver and the Blu-ray player. It is true though, that I have to have a long ethernet cable running all the way from the router in the hall, to the NAS in the living room. Doesn’t bother me, but in some houses that might be a bit intrusive.
Thanks all… will let you know how I get on.
I’m currently re ripping all mine again after half came out in Chinese and two in hindu
Writing the artist and album manually this time
I’m going to be a bit contrarian and suggest that if you’re not going to use the NAS for anything else like general storage on your network, I wouldn’t buy one just for this. I would go for an external SSD drive for the music, and one regular external HDD of the same capacity to back it up. A two-bay NAS will cost you about £300, and around £100 a disk. Really you should back that up to an external drive as well.
An external 2TB SSD is around £250, and a 2TB HDD to back it up less than £100.
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Why do you need a two bay NAS?
You don’t need it for continuity of service (just stream tidal or something, or play a record if it goes down) and it is not a back up.
I use a single 3TB NAS and back it up to a separate drive every now and then.
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That’s what I ended up doing - replaced my 2-bay with a single and just use a USB drive for backup.
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You and me, etc. etc.
Because a one-bay NAS is even more pointless.
It isn’t, though, at least if you have more than one computer (or TV, or whatever) you want to access stuff on. The important thing here is ‘network’.
sigh.
If only you’d included that bit in your quote for context.
Sigh… 
I didn’t think I’d need to fuckin’ repeat myself from 2 posts earlier, but that was obviously a schoolboy error.
It was 
You don’t seriously expect me to read more than one post back do you?
Oh… 
I never got Spotify or Tidal to sound any good using a laptop.
I was using Jriver, laptop with SSD outputting though USB into WaveIO, that converted to I2S and into my dac.
WaveIO to dac were 4cm long connections.
I then got a RPi (oh yeah you don’t want to hear that🙂) and a Allo Kali reclocker to input I2S to the Dac. Kali is the Indian goddess of time. Multi armed (sound familiar), and she takes no prisoners.
The reclocker is a must! RPI is all over the place on its own.
Using Volumio’s Spotify connect and more recently Qobuz with Volumio Virtuoso there is no turning back.
The SQ is way better!
I use a LAN connection from router to RPi.
I have a few files on NAS (usb plugged into the router). Qobuz sounds better.
The availability of quality remastered and original stuff is just mind blowing.
All for £12.49 / month. Oh yeah, plus the Virtuoso sub of €27 a year.
No going back.
If the Asus Tinkerboard becomes compatible with Kali, I might try one of those.
If you don’t have I2S then there are a few good SPDIF outputting tophats, but I know they still benefit from a good reclocking like Mutec.
But cheaper