I love the sound of tubes and rock and roll. I put as much into this financially as I was able to. I have had this system about 2.5 years and I am looking for some advice on change. Specifically, I want to swap my main source.

I am headed in the direction of a hard drive based, lossless file format system centered around iTunes. Although the Slim Devices Transporter looks appealing, I don't think I am interested in packaged hardware / software servers. I'll obviously do an external DAC, but I also want to be able to control playback from my iPhone and my Macbook, have access to internet radio such as Pandora (for my girlfriend mainly), and get the best sound possible without making it too complicated (I am not computer wiz).

I've been doing my research and have some concerns like the idea of jitter and clocking I see people discussing similar systems, having to have another completely separate computer, being limited to DAC that have USB inputs, etc.

Lastly, I will tell you now I have no idea what a lot of the initials people on here use to abbreviate things mean so please be clear in your responses.

Thanks so much everyone. Let me know what you think!