Are you trying to get the best sound quality within your budget, or are you trying to get the cheapest solution that does what you want? If the latter, do what @junzhang10 suggested. If the former, get a NAS like a Synology or QNAP, add digital drives to the NAS (e.g. Western Digital Red drives). This is a basically a giant hard drive that connects to your router via ethernet cable. Put it in a room other than the audio room, with your router. Then get a good ethernet fed renderer aka network player(e.g. Sonore rendu series, Aurelic Aries (not Mini), etc. These are basically single purpose low computing devices that work to stream your files from the NAS, or playing music streamed from internet services like Tidal or Qobuz. They take ethernet input and the output goes to your DAC input. They are controlled via apps that can run on iPad or eve n phone. By sure to invest in a good linear power supply for the renderer, it makes a huge difference.
I'm sure @audioengr will chime in with another good approach, but this thinking will get you far and well within your budget with good flexibility for future adaption as your dac, etc. change.
FWIW, most computer solutions run tons of noisy processes that don't have anything to do with good audio and they are susceptible to electrical noise, EMI.RFI which all make them challenging at best.
Tons of threads hear and on computeraudiophile have addressed the topic. Cheers,
Spencer
I'm sure @audioengr will chime in with another good approach, but this thinking will get you far and well within your budget with good flexibility for future adaption as your dac, etc. change.
FWIW, most computer solutions run tons of noisy processes that don't have anything to do with good audio and they are susceptible to electrical noise, EMI.RFI which all make them challenging at best.
Tons of threads hear and on computeraudiophile have addressed the topic. Cheers,
Spencer