Welcome to this chat forum and Congratulations for your system.
Below is my opinion and budgeted.
I was looking for Cocktail Audio X30/x40 is in early days I never had good way to send bit-stream to Dev. for me AIR did not work well and I was not interested in iTunes. Then I bought Bluesound which i sold eventually. However coming back to X30/40, this has so many components and outputs, DAC a little amp etc for which we dont use and paying for those unnecessarily.
Dev has good DAC in itself and all it needs is bit-sream so it can do its job well. Now there are good number of people on Roon (Software) + Computer to stream audio digital bit-stream to Dev over AIR3/USB and other options.
Personally I would recommend looking into "Roon" thread on Streaming category in this forum. Computer -> Mac-Mini, NUC, Intel Laptop, MacBook, sonicTransporter, uRendu etc.
there are serious X100 users on this forum. Ripping is indeed painful but i dont think its as easy as its written on their website but thats my opinion. And there are believers nothing beats CD player which X40 has on board.
Good Luck for your streaming options.
Below is my opinion and budgeted.
I was looking for Cocktail Audio X30/x40 is in early days I never had good way to send bit-stream to Dev. for me AIR did not work well and I was not interested in iTunes. Then I bought Bluesound which i sold eventually. However coming back to X30/40, this has so many components and outputs, DAC a little amp etc for which we dont use and paying for those unnecessarily.
Dev has good DAC in itself and all it needs is bit-sream so it can do its job well. Now there are good number of people on Roon (Software) + Computer to stream audio digital bit-stream to Dev over AIR3/USB and other options.
Personally I would recommend looking into "Roon" thread on Streaming category in this forum. Computer -> Mac-Mini, NUC, Intel Laptop, MacBook, sonicTransporter, uRendu etc.
there are serious X100 users on this forum. Ripping is indeed painful but i dont think its as easy as its written on their website but thats my opinion. And there are believers nothing beats CD player which X40 has on board.
Good Luck for your streaming options.
Rock OS (Roon) on NUC 2016 Model (ETH Wired to Router) > Cat8 from Router to switch to 220Pro (CI) > RAAT/AIR > Monitor Audio PL300 II
Ipad Mini 4/iPhone for Roon Remote"
Ipad Mini 4/iPhone for Roon Remote"
