Sorry David, you may or may not be aware that struts001 (“the ostrich”) is now dormant and since joining dCS in November of 2024 I am now posting as AndrewS.
To preface my answer I would suggest you first reread my first post in this thread. You should consider your “Is there any point…?” question in the context of the three areas of difference: functional differences, non-functional differences (convenience) and non-functional differences (sound quality). I take it from your statement “I personally strive for the best SQ” that your focus is on the latter so while there are clear functional and usability differences between different server solutions, any of which may be enormously attractive to you and on which only you can be the judge, I’ll mostly ignore them here.
A network attached storage device (NAS) is an asynchronous disk array connected over the network (ethernet) interface. To access it from your Bartók requires a UPnP server (which provides the indexing capability that enables flexible search and retrieval) which you control from Mosaic or some other compatible UI/app of your choice. The UPnP server can run either on a general purpose PC (Mac, Windows or Linux) anywhere on your network, on the majority of NAS devices, or on the majority of dedicated 3rd party music servers. The latter often provide enhanced user interfaces for setup and configuration, the native MinimServer (the UPnP server we recommend) UI is somewhat “spartan”.
I personally run MinimServer on an ASUS NUC running DietPi as described here. While installing DietPi and the MinimServer and Roon Server apps and configuring them to access my NAS was fairly straightforward it did require some basic familiarity with Linux, so definitely not something for the IT-illiterate. Once set up however I have never had to intervene since.
I store my music on a Qnap NAS (see here) which sits in my network closet well away from my audio system and is powered by an external HDPLEX power supply. The Qnap also has the ability to run both MinimServer and Roon Server (if relevant) locally, I have just chosen not to do it this way. As you will read in the thread, the Qnap is quite a sophisticated enterprise-grade product whose enormous flexibility and configurability makes setup quite unsuitable for the IT-illiterate or faint-hearted. However once set up it has become a self-playing piano and I have not had to intervene since.
From a Sound Quality perspective, there is no known way that a storage device can affect the sound quality of an audio system through the signal path. The transfer is bit perfect as guaranteed by the IP network stack as long as the basic performance (read speed and network bandwidth) is sufficient to prevent buffer underflow (which any modern NAS should be able to exceed by many, many orders of magnitude). Since the interface is asynchronous (buffered at multiple intermediate points) interface jitter is a non-issue. Now of course there are other ways the storage device could affect sound quality outside the signal path, such as emitting EMI or injecting noise into the ring main but I have tried to address those in my setup.
Now many people (both on this forum and outside) have claimed that there are subjective differences between asynchronous storage systems and there is no way I can argue with or disprove their experiences. However I have yet to see anybody offer any solid technical arguments for the mechanisms behind any such differences and so the engineer in me has no particular interest in exploring them further. Again, there can be manifold other differences in functional and non-functional capabilities but those are a different kettle of fish.
So to summarize:
- My own choices here are offered purely by way of example, of both the huge variety of ways there are to skin this particular cat, and also to illuminate some of the trade-offs. They are in no way offered as recommendations, either by me personally or by dCS. They were my choices made for my system and it should be clear from my descriptions that they will certainly not be suitable for all. Hopefully the prerequisite skills required will be clear enough from my descriptions. For the totally IT-illiterate I personally think the audio-specific music server products have a lot to offer, although how much that is worth is something only you can judge.
- If anybody has theoretical arguments that explain why another storage system or music server product would offer better sound quality than mine I would invite them to put them forward. Not just citing features such as casework, specially chosen hard disks, “audiophile” power supplies or re-clocked network ports, but the actual mechanism by which they influence what happens in the DAC.
- I am not ruling out that sound quality differences exist, and that such differences might be explained by mechanisms we have yet to identify. We don’t know what we don’t know. All I am saying is that based on our current understanding there is no obvious explanation for why one asynchronous storage system (notwithstanding non-signal path related aspects such as EMI and mains noise) should sound fundamentally different to another. So in my opinion the differences, and the answer to your “Is there any point..?” question lie elsewhere.