Originally Posted by
montesquieu
Quite. I have a unix administrator's certificate in the cupboard (from somewhere around 1991 but doubt it's changed much).
A decent USB-SPDIF receiver will have galvanic isolation for the USB connection and probably reclocking of the signal as well - better than any on-board gizmo for a Pi. The effects of this should be measurable. This means any PC-related noise is essentially irrelevant and no need for fancy linear PSUs.
The richness and robustness of the Mac or PC desktop interface available from the likes of JRiver or any of the other mainsteam Mac/PC apps is superior to anything you get from a browser-based interface (which is all you get from a Pi), while browser applications are available as well on the PC/Mac should you want/need them. I use a 9-year old Macbook with a solid state hard drive and its maximum RAM capacity, which runs a recent OS and indeed in performance is to me largely indistinguishable from the main far more modern Macbook I use on a daiy basis. It's controllable from iPhone and iPad apps as well if I need it to be. (Though I generally don't bother).
Streaming remains an inferior way of interacting with music in my view (I much prefer vinyl where I can read the sleeve and not have to faff with pushing buttons on screen - I work in IT and spend my life in front of a screen, so it's the last thing I want to do in my leisure hours) but it's there, it's simple and all you really need is a USB-SPDIF interface and a DAC, or just a USB DAC. So it's pretty much there (plug and play - this plus a spotify account) and no need to worry about software versions, burning boot disks and faffing about with settings - set your wifi connection, plug the cable in and go.
I had two RPis - one with a DAC board and the other with SPDIF - and it all just seemed like a pointless faff. If you enjoy the buggering about that's fine, it's a hobby after all, but there's precisely nothing about it that's superior to what you can do with a Mac (or indeed, a PC), and a good USB-SPDIF interface+DAC. The Pi may be a *cheaper* way of getting results but it's still a computer, just a very small and limited one, any notion of its superiority is just delusional.