I am talking about commercial products, none, as far as I know, uses that, It IS Geeky to build your streamer with a PI. It might feel normal to the ASR crowd, but that just proves the point. is The source code available to be modified? general users wants to open an app, with the logo of the product they just bought as the Icon. a web based logitech branded UI wouldn't cut it. a web interface, it would have to be really transparent to appeal the general public. Am I missing something? I apologize if I ignored new developments to it, that's the perception I have but maybe it's not the case
I think you have layers of commercial with shrinking pies. Amazon, Google, Apple at the top, Sonos, Denon, Sony, Klipsch and some others in the next level down, having agreements with the other firms, and selling premium priced products that do not really compete in the same space, and will not integrate as well as the first tier. Then you have open source stuff like this at the bottom. It will be priced in the middle, it will be the least convenient, and the sound quality will vary, with the greatest upside by far, besting Denon, Sonos, if they do a good job.
The whole streaming and downloading thing with ownership, licensing, bitrates, and audibility is interesting.
I would not purchase a dowload or license to stream anything I can access by buying a modestly priced subscription.
I chose Amazon because I got sucked in by some inexpensive devices early on, already had Prime, and it seems like the best value in terms of library per dollar. They also got a great emotional connection by adding the 'computer' wake word, so I can feel like Commander Riker in Star Trek.
The Amazon hardware, software, and service are an incredible value. There are tremendous economies of scale here competing with Google and Apple to be in every house. The whole house voice controlled system cost less than each of many pieces of gear I have.
This is a huge market, but how does a company like SMSL get a real piece of it? What they are doing, going for the serious customer in that smallest and most esoteric segment makes sense.
With Amazon, you can get the full Ultra HD (192/24) through your own speakers with a computer, but there you lose integration with the whole house voice and phone app controlled system. Aux out from an echo device or an echo link are usually better alternatives.
It is really hard to get it right without doing seperates. I love the idea though. It is just so hard to get the software integrated to be useful and competitive. The Echo Link is OK, but it should support the full bitrate on the dugital output. Oh well, we will probably get there.
One product I would love to see is an L30 / Modi sized box or a Modius sized box with a digital input, EQ, maybe a selector so I can swap speaker and headphone settings, and a digital output. Ideally set the EQ with a wifi phone app that looks similar to Wavelet... or add those features to either the DAC or streamer. The DAC makes more sense to me though because Amazon etc. may be hard to beat on streamers.