Simplest stand alone setup

[DavidHB]

Simon and I posted almost simultaneously, and I defer to his greater knowledge in favouring the Synology 213air as a one stop shop for meeting your needs. I'd also underline his advice that you would need to have a wired connection between the Akurate and the Synology (via the router, I'd guess, as the Synology has only one Ethernet port, and you'd probably want to retain the option of a wired connection from your laptop, especially for large data transfers).

It is worth consulting your dealer about hard drives, as some are more suitable than others; alternatively, a bundle deal ought to provide suitable drives. Prices in the UK are in the $450 range for bundles (which mostly seem to feature the WD Red drives).

Unless you are prepared to pay a large premium for SSDs, you will need to find somewhere to place the Synology where you will not hear the hard disk noise when you are listening to music.

David