Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

I have an idea of what the future of a digital HiFi should look like.

At the moment, most of us using digital files are either doing:

1. Locally owned files are on a NAS, some type of box (Sonos, Squeezebox, etc) to play the files, and some kind of app (or physical accessory) for the remote control.
   
2. Spotify/Google Play/etc streamed to tablet/phone and either directly wired to a HiFi or wirelessly cast to AirPlay or some device connected to the HiFi.
   
   

The disadvantage to the first scenario is the physical ownership and management of the NAS, and the clunkiness of the remote apps. The advantage is the sound quality, usually losless files and a great DAC.

The disadvantage to the second scenario is the crap DAC, and the fact that audio files go via pointless middleman device (phone/tablet) and is dependant on that device to carry on playing. The only advantage is convenience of use.

I basically imagine something that is the hybrid of both of those, that the HiFi of the future has these features:

1. Cloud storage for owned files, i.e. FLAC files - You own this cloud storage, not a 3rd party
   
2. A network connected device with a great DAC attached to the HiFi
   
3. An app that is on the phone and acts as the remote
   
   

The app in question should work against an index of the cloud stored files, as well as allowing you to access anything via Spotify/Google Play/etc.

If you own a file, and have the lossless version, it would play that... otherwise it would play the highest quality source it can find via streaming.

The hardware near the stereo could be a commodity PC or even a Raspberry Pi... it would be low power and fanless, and it would just play whatever you wanted it to. It would have some space for a local cache, enough to store about 20 albums lossless... i.e. you could cache locally a whole playlist for a party, and instantly playback any album you have played recently.

The closest the market currently has to this is the Sonos Controller paired with Google Play Music.

But... Sonos doesn't know how to do cloud storage + cache, and both the Sonos and Google Play are capped on the number of tracks they can handle (65k and 20k respectively), and finally Google Play doesn't actually store FLACs it downsamples to MP3 or just gives you someone else's MP3 to de-duplicate.

So we're actually not at all close to having the ideal digital HiFI.

I am a little curious about this though, and might see if I can hack something up at some point. It seems obvious to me that this is how it should be. A full network audio system, which embraces lossless and owned media, and yet makes subscription sources fully available.