I set up a NAS yesterday by plugging a 500GB hard drive into my PC and sharing on my home network, Volumio set up was easy once I worked out how to write the file path in the correct format.
This definitely sounds different to a USB memory stick plugged straight into the Pi and will need further listening to see if I prefer it.
There is more detail and I am hearing things not heard before, but there appears to be less 'body' to the sound.
Will see how it goes