Looking back, when I first started streaming, I felt that my system of 252 / 300 with HDX into the Naim DAC / 555PS was a real sweet spot in the then Naim lineup.
The Naim DAC was certainly some piece of kit, especially with the 555PS. 
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Recently there was a discussion on Wav vs Flac. Apparently, with the new streamers, there seem to be no differences.
You should try and compare Flac vs Wav on some tracks.
If you find no difference, you can ( or your dealer) transcode all your library in Flac. Then you will have no metadata or cover art problems. Itās what I did. But use more AIFF today.
With WAV, there was a lot of cover arts missing.
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Yes, very strange.
There are also 2 members here with Nd555 who prefer to have Uniticore connected to their Nd555 in spdif. For me itās even more strange, because the streaming part of the Nd555 should logically be miles ahead over the Core.
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No comments on aurender??
One thing i want to say about it is why on earth did aurender offer 16 and 24 tb storage on their system? Thatās what? 8000 plus albums worth of music and 16000 albums worth in wav. Who has that much music? Seems like something to expect in a movie and music storage server. They couldāve cut it in half and passed the savings in.
Hoping to get more opinions to make a choice
Nope - am using flac as it happens and still a disaster (though thanks for the suggestion!)
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One explanation could be that music files that have been pre-processed through upscaling software, such as PGGB, and then stored take up a lot more disk space than standard CD / Red Book files.
Conventional wisdom is to keep the server and storage function separate from the streamer/renderer, although not all audio manufacturers follow that design philosophy.
The Melco N1ZH/2 (now EX) is excellent as a server, quite a few on here have one(mine was sold for personal reasons). The D100 ripper, or the Buffalo (parent company of Melco) DVD ripper get the best out of ripping to Melco.
My āserverā is now a Chord 2Go/2Yu with 2 * 1Tb MicroSD cards to store the previously ripped music, plus converted and downloaded files.
For a streaming bridge the Auralic Aries G2.1 is very good, but it does need an external DAC. I have just bought one after an extended home demo. It can take an internal SSD or HDD, but I wonāt introduce a potentialānoise sourceā into mine.
@TimOopNorth it might be worth you contacting Melco UK support at ADMM to get an alternative view on your library / folder art issues.
Most people , elsewhere, with Aurender share when using it in USB mode, connected to a dac. Here most have Innuos, Melco , Core or Nucleus as audiophile servers.
Ā£100
I use a Pioneer cd/dvd ripper connected to my laptop and DBpoweramp to rip CDs. It is bit-perfect and does a check with all the same rips by other rips around the world. You can select your choice of metadata from columns from different metadata providers. Gets classical music correct most of the time. It can convert from any codec. Eg. ALAC to FLAC.
Ā£600
Beosound Core, connects to Deezer/Spotify and a NAS where music is located. Music held in folders. Chromecast built-in, Apple airPlay, Bluetooth, DLNA and Spotify. Works very well and highly stable. Optical output (no noise and audiophile anxieties of mine to contend with) to my DAC. Sounds as good as any 5-figure streamer/DAC box IMHO. Doesnāt come in a fancy metal box but so small it hides away in a drawer. Regular software updates since 2017.
Whatever you pick, donāt forget to backup, backup, backupā¦. One of those backups should be held off-site.
Another possibility which I reckon you were probably aware of, Gazza, but just to put down in writing again for others is that when using the Zenith or other Innuos music server with a PhoenixNet, you only want to use the LAN port and not the Streamer port.
It only sounds really good that way.
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The op could just go with a mac mini and a hard drive into his dac. Solves the tagging issue and apple music is still a reasonable music management program - certainly its ability to ārandomizeā playlists is far in advance of Naim and the other servers. The Remote app and an ipad is a good gui approach. I use an Aurender spdif converter between the dac and the mac. Any dvd drive can be used for the tiresome task of ripping cds (took 4 months off and on for 4,000 cdsā¦)
If heās not interested in streaming, this is a fairly simple approach.
Iāve tried a number of different servers in my 552/300/ ndac/xps/ Neat xl6 system over the years. The (to my ears) miniscule improvements in sound are completely offset by flaws in useability, back up functionality, software/firmware updates.
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Yes indeed I have almost 20.000 albums on two Melcoās, Both are 10TB and are both at 66%, while I use streaming for trying out new stuffā¦, I still prefer the audio quality from local storage and also the connected certaintyā¦
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