If it were not for the backup aspect, i would say you can run all this off any PC you have unless you are a laptop kind of guy and don't leave it on all the time, plus has more limited storage.
My office PC is on 24/7 and has 2TB of storage. It IS the NAS.
I use two portable USB drives for backup. One at home, manual backup every other month then unplug it from the PC (extra safeguard), and the second one gets updated usually once a year and is stored offsite.
This is all a bit more physical, but unless i pay for cloud space, that isn't an option. It is also less desirable uploading one's files to cloud for backup even though i have everything encrypted. Just doesn't feel comfortable.
Our Sonos is also getting long in the tooth and with the new versions they produced, they added very little tech, actually took away one connector type, are charging a bit more than the first versions and require you have an account logged in to access the app/software.
Um no thanks.
Our legacy Sonos doesn't require that so when it dies, we'll be moving on.
The next version could very well be BluOS, but at some point we might subscribe to Spotify or Tidal just to get more variety.
I'm 100% in agreeement that the FLAC rips sound better than Spotify (haven't had a chance to demo Tidal). As long as we have our ripped files and no online equivalent for them all, we'll need a media streamer, but i look forward to the day where this is simplified and more universal. So many proprietary formats and such out there still. Reminds me of the early days of USB where we had wars with other connector types until USB came out on top, or VHS vs. Betamax, or DVD-A vs SACD, or.....
