Hello,
We're doing some remodeling to our 45 year-old house, and after moving the furniture where my wife wants it, my main PC is no longer next to my main 2-channel system.
It has a preamp with built in DAC that can accept optical digital, coax digital, or USB. I have an ASIO driver from the manufacturer for use with Windows. It is said that for Mac OS, native drivers are sufficient, no extra driver is needed. Manufacturer doesn't specify regarding Linux variants.
I had been using a desktop PC, with Win 10 and JRiver MC26, with outstanding results. Very pleasing to the ears. But a direct, hardwire connection from PC to preamp is no longer possible. I don't (yet) have a network server, and accessing files stored on a PC on my home network (set up as a Windows work network, but located in my home) has given me fits, dropping the connection, blocking access to shared files, etc. Pretty lame, always having to go to another room to reset network discovery every time I want to use it. Plus the greater lag/latency loading the files. I realize that if I learned Windows networks better I might be able to avoid some or all of the issues, but time is important to me too. Plus, whatever you learn today is only good until the next update that rearranges everything, wasting more of my limited time on a frustrating exercise.
For replacing the PC, I am considering one of the Pi flavors, raspberry, pecan or orange, but have no experience with any of them. I think I have read somewhere around here that Raspberry Pi can be used with a web based interface, so a phone or other mobile device can be used for browsing and file selection. I think that would be quite nice. Room correction is less important to me at the moment, simply because I'm not sophisticated enough to be using it yet, but would be good to add down the road (one thing at a time). I have a portable USB hard drive (with all my music files) I'd like to connect to the Pi, and plan to use USB to connect the Pi to the DAC that is built into the preamp.
So, I'd need at least two USB ports, the ability to run a software player of some type, and WiFi. That's it. It seems about any of the Pi's would handle that readily. But would they all work equally well? Is price the only difference between them? How much processing power, and how much RAM is needed?
Thank you in advance for any help you're able to provide.