Frankly, if you have $4k now, there's no reason you can't get the whole she-bang right away. There's a lot of excellent affordable gear out there. If you have to choose, though, I'd say speakers first.

I would get the answer to your first question addressed...first. If the server is not "Audiophile quality" then the rest of the system can hardly be expected to be.

Assuming you have a couple of big hard drives in place already, one to rip lossless formats to and one to backup to ( the first order of business) then you can go about deciding how best to deliver that content to the rest of the system.

I know of no better solution for the money, than Slimdevices Squeezebox ($300), driving an external state of the art DAC (approx. avg. $1,000). If you want to avoid the DAC merry-go-round you could consider the Slimdevices Transporter at $2,000.00 and be done with it.

IMHO either of these methods future proofs your requested "Audiophile Digital Music Server".

RG

Quote:
I would get the answer to your first question addressed...first. If the server is not "Audiophile quality" then the rest of the system can hardly be expected to be.

Assuming you have a couple of big hard drives in place already, one to rip lossless formats to and one to backup to ( the first order of business) then you can go about deciding how best to deliver that content to the rest of the system.

I know of no better solution for the money, than Slimdevices Squeezebox ($300), driving an external state of the art DAC (approx. avg. $1,000). If you want to avoid the DAC merry-go-round you could consider the Slimdevices Transporter at $2,000.00 and be done with it.

IMHO either of these methods future proofs your requested "Audiophile Digital Music Server".

RG

Brilliant!

I defer to RG's excellent advice.

Now, tell us more. Type of music you listen to, how hard you want the system to be able to party, what kind of room you have, etc!