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Music listening used to be simple. You had your music on vinyl and used a turn table connected to an amp & speakers to play it. Bamm. Dark Side of the Moon in all of three seconds. Okay, maybe five. I've gone from one possible configuration to another, finding significant flaws in each of them before finally landing on the Cambridge CXN all-in-one solution. But I'm convinced there must be a much better solution, and in fact, I'm beginning to believe we can largely get back what we had in paragraph 1 while enjoying instant access to our entire music libraries, and without spending a fortune. I MAY have found a way. The purpose of this thread is finding confirmation, correction, redirection, etc. regarding one possible configuration using the ever popular microRendu. Please forgive the over simplifications. You are the most sophisticated group in the universe, and I love that about you, but I'm getting older and don't grasp some of these concepts as quickly. My current understanding as well as where I'm headed is the following: 1. Best case scenario, a music library is stored, as well as managed and played, on a network-connected PC, Mac, or NAS located somewhere else in the house (I believe the reason for this is a significant reduction in noise is made possible by keeping each electrical component in the audio chain separated into its own electrical circuit). In my case, the Windows 10 PC is a home theater computer (HTPC) with JRiver Media Center (JRMC) as music player, manager, & server software. An iPad Air with JRemote is used as a remote control. 2. The still-digitized music is sent (streamed) over the network and must be received in the music-listening room by a "renderer" (in my case, the microRendu) which converts the "data stream" into digital music. It is then sent to a directly connected digital-to-analog converter (a.k.a. DAC - in my case, the Emotiva Stealth DC-1) which is then connected to your amp & speakers. In short: Win10/JRMC HTPC with internal flac library > ethernet cable > router > ethernet cable > microRendu > USB cable > DC-1 DAC > RCA or Balanced cable > amp & speakers; controlled by iPad Air/JRemote. Is this a configuration you could live with? If not, why; and what would you do differently? Thank you.