help a Die hard ANALOG guy choose a budget CDP

@whart This other post of mine hopefully addresses your suggestion. Thanks,
Spencer

@sbank -Thanks. FWIW, re linear power supplies, i was pretty surprised to see how much some of the audiophile ones were (maybe I should not have been). And many of those were limited to one voltage/current output. I bought a decent bench supply of the type used for testing/repair that has variable settings for both voltage and current, a large toroidal transformer, etc. Not a true high end lab quality model, but good enough for my purposes- I am using it to run an Acoustic Revive thingie right now. I can supply a link if anyone is interested. 

Running music direct from a hard drive, via USB will be more than adequate.  Using an ethernet setup does not automatically make better sound.  Setting up a NAS can be very expensive and is far more involved than simply connecting an external USB hard drive to a DAC.  The money would be mush better spent on just buying a better DAC.

I defy anyone to actually be able to hear a difference between hi-res files fed from an external USB hard drive and those sent via ethernet from a NAS.

@audiofreak32 Okay, consider yourself defied ;-)

IHME, I heard a difference as did plenty of visitors here and none of us claim golden ears. But I agree with you that if that changing the file storage to NAS is your only change it wouldn't be a great value investment.
The bigger difference vs. just changing from external local HDD(via Firewire to Mac) and NAS via ethernet(CAT6A) was getting rid of the Mac(running A+ or Amarra) completely and replacing with a microRendu with a good linear power supply. The digital source can make a critical difference and the better your DAC, the more you will likely appreciate it.
1)Running a lower powered device with cleaner power
2) less process intensive Linux O/S not fighting against many non-audio related processes that run on typical PCs & Macs
3) elimination of disk drive in the listening room (especially if not solid state drive)
4) optical isolation between NAS & audio analog components all improve the sound in most cases.
5) Regen technology and optimized USB output vs. full function computers
All these result in sonic improvements that result in more believable digital music. This stuff is discussed elsewhere in greater detail, Cheers,
Spencer

Lots more work/cost for not much benefit...