Mac Mini As A Streaming Source

OP,

Let’s start from scratch here.
 

You have a good piece of high end audio equipment, the Mark Levinsion 585.5. You do not want to be hooking that up with iPads, laptops or PCs. These are very low quality sources and will be reflected in the output you get.

Apple music and others through a phone or iPads are great for travel and headphones.

There has been a huge amount of change in the digital arena over the last ten or fifteen years. I have had all sorts of these things along the way.

Today, if you were going to assemble a digital system you would buy a streamer and a DAC. No CDs, or SACDs. These players are transports + streamers + DAC.

At nearly all price levels a good quality purpose built streamer with Qobuz can sound as good as a vinyl, CD, or SACD system. Buying physical disks with files on them, buying and buying music files have come and gone (lots of folks still do it, but the age has passed). 
 

‘’You can look at my system. I have a top notch vinyl system, and can play CDs. Streaming has the same sound quality, often better, since Qobuz offers over +1/2 million high resolution albums with millions of CD quality for $12/month. 
 

So, you need a high quality streamer. I recommend Aurender. You control it with your iPad. Roon adds another level of complexity and cost. Personally I don’t find it useful. Some streamers support it. Given your system, I recommend investing about $5K in a streamer… although streamers sound better the higher the price. Aurender only produces the streamer and arguably the best high end in the business. There are lots of good ones. I don’t recommend one less that $3.5K… but you must find the right one. 

AirPlay 2 is limited to 24 bit / 48 kHz, so not ideal if you want bit-perfect hi-res playback.

I don’t think any third-party software integrates Apple Music so you’ll have to control the Mac if you’re wed to that streaming service.

You can enable Screen Sharing on your Mac and use an app like RealVNC to control the Mac from an iPad. The thing to remember with VNC is that you’re using a mouse cursor to interact with the remote desktop. That means you’re dragging your fingertip to move the cursor to the right spot to click a button or select a row, etc.

I would use USB to connect the Mac to the ML 585.5.

I currently have a Mac mini pulling double duty as music storage and as a streamer for a living room system. I use an Android app called BubbleUPnP to send hi-res audio from my phone to the Mac.

See above… I agree completely.

Mac Mini is a cost savings move, but not a great move for the end product. Unfortunately, quality streamers, DACs are expensive, but it can be an iterative process. I was using a 10th Gen I7 NUC with iFi Zen and this bettered anything done with a Mac, but the Aurender line is in another league regarding the end result. I have Apple Music etc. and use it with my Apple Watch Ultra and Bluetooth AirPod Pro2 and it works great for jogging, walking and working out, but it isn’t “High Resolution/High Bitrate” when using it this way and Apple is a relatively new player to quality streaming. I’m sure in time some streamers will pass Apple Music. I use Qobuz. In fact my whole family streams Qobuz on different devices, including streaming in the car via CarPlay. Pretty easy to transfer playlists to Qobuz and all the streamers will work…great service. For me, I will probably discontinue Apple Music. I can stream via my watch music that I have ripped to my Synology NAS to both my watch and my car.. One less music service to pay for.

I had used an Apple computer in the distant past as a music server but changed over to a dedicated audio streamer mostly because I believed that a home computer is a device designed to do many things well, including acting as a music source but a dedicated audio streamer is a device designed to do this one thing. It made more sense to choose a music server. Nowadays with better software and chips, I don't know if that argument still holds true??? 

I believe JRiver Media Center for MAC and JRemote (iOS) will do what you want to do. You can try JRiver Media Center free of charge for 30 days. JRemote (iOS) would cost you $9.99. In any case, it wouldn't cost much to try it out. It would take some effort to get it running correctly.