The problem is that many have conflicted views. That is the problem. The choice above is fanless for the cpu and the hdd makes 21db working.
I haven't heard anything about digital noise from anybody besides you. You can be right of course. What do others think of my choice above. Yay or Nay? If the Shuttle introduces noise in the dac or music then I will disregard it. I want the quality to be at least cd quality.
It'll work fine. Electronic noise will not be an issue. Just don't stack the NUC on top of the RME.
If I was going to spend that much on a NUC, I'd put an SSD in it. A 2.5" SATA SSD is fine.
Everything described so far can easily handle very high-res files. It will take a while to to fill up 2 TB of storage.
You can configure the ripping software so that it outputs files directly to a network share on the NUC.