Quote Originally Posted by montesquieu View Post
I'm getting very confused by all this.

Most people have DACs already. In most cases, rather good ones. And in any event, most digital sounds the same, so any DAC will only be as good as its preamp functionality (I'm been down this route before of voltage output ... people start of thinking its wonderful, amazing lovely sound right from a circuit board ... then after some months they add a transformer to match impedance... or a sold state buffer ... or a tube output stage to make it sound better).

Surely the market here is in the streaming part of the device - the interface between files stored on a network, and output of AES/EBU, SPDIF, or USB output to a DAC? Squeezebox area of the market?

What if I don't need or want an integrated DAC?
I just think of it as a very cheap computer, which is what it is. It has various I/O options and could be made to do all sorts of things.

What you want to use it for is up to you. I don't need one - anyone with a laptop, some Wi-Fi maybe for a hard drive connected to their router or a streaming service maybe, and a DAC probably doesn't need one either. It does do video though so it can be a super cheap HTPC.

There are so many option now for configuring a playback system via computers the mind literally boggles. The PI 2 is just another option. Some will like it, some will think it is shite I suspect. Much depends on what they are trying to use it for and if they manage to configure it successfully. Much will also depend on the quality of the s/w and h/w they use to achieve their goal.

The two massive pluses are size and price.

Some will get so frustrated with it they'll give up I suspect!