Right now I’m running my server on a raspberry pi 3B using OMV with one external drive for all my storage. I’m planning on upgrading soon, and was leaning towards basically what you have, some type of mini pc or a newer SBC connected to a DAS. What makes you say that setup is not ideal? If you were starting fresh would you go straight to a NAS or something else?

Nickel Creek is cool! They have songs with vocals too, but some instrumental stuff as well. Kinda bluegrass feel. My favorite of theirs is Smoothie Song