Where do I start to have them all together?
That depends on how you want to use them once they're all together. Like I mentioned in the podcast, I've been looking for something that works for me, that does what I want it to do, for years. But there may be something out there that would do everything you need it to do without being as costly as the Sony thing.
Just keeping your music files in one place is easy, you can do it on your computer (but you shouldn't) or a separate "outboard" hard drive that hooks up to your computer. You can get a 3
terabyte hard drive for less than $100 now, and one of those will hold roughly 9,000 albums. So storage space isn't really an issue these days (I have two 3TB hard drives in a cheap dock hooked up to my computer, one is my backup drive and the other is a copy of that backup drive - a backup of my backup). None of what I just said applies to Apple computers, of course. I'd guess you'd have to multiply the cost 3 or 4 times to get Apple prices.
The problem comes when you've got your music files all in one place and then you want to play them. That was my problem anyway. Well, that and I wanted some kind of hardware that could sit next to my other stereo components. But wherever they are, you need some kind of program to organize them that makes it easy to find and play things. Sounds like you use iTunes. I don't really know how that works, but I assume you can just say, okay iTunes, all my music is over here now, go index it. But again, I don't know how it works, and it's probably not that simple.
But the user interface is was what sold me on the Sony - the fact that it had the audio hardware, did storage,
and had a user interface that I really liked. That user interface is what's important, and what's "good" as far as that goes is different for everyone.
So there are a lot of words that don't really answer your question...
Here's an answer: if you're going to keep using iTunes and listening on your computer, just get a big hard drive (or two) and hook them up to your computer.
If you are listening on your stereo, you need to find some kind of stereo-like box to plug in to it. Some of those connect (wirelessly) to your computer, some store the files on the box itself.
Well, that's still not much of an answer, but it's all I've got in me right now.