Can you build a digital music streamer around a Raspberry Pi 4 with an external DAC?


Hi,I have a Raspberry Pi 4 with 4 GB of RAM that I was going to use for another project that fell through. I’ve been looking on the Internet to see if you can use this little wonder to create a music server, using one of the USB ports to hook it up to an external DAC. I know that there is a Linux distribution especially made for this purpose, in which a standard web browser on any device can be used to control the server. If anybody knows more about whether this is doable, I’d love to know. Thanks. Oh, and I should clarify that I would of course be using an external hard drive to store my files.
rebbi
PiCorePlayer software is designed specifically for the RPi. It can run as a just a player (Squeezelite), or just a music server (running Logitech Media Server aka LMS), or both.

The player can be run as just a headless player, or has an option, with a RPi screen attached, to display what is being played. If the screen is touch-enabled, the music can also be selected and controlled using the touch screen.

The software can be run on a RPi 3, but you really need a DAC or Digital-out HAT for good sound; the USB out is dicey at best. The RPi 4 is more powerful and can run USB output just fine without a HAT.

Very versatile.


One place to start is with some of the videos on John Darko's site. Here's one and there are others explaining further options.
https://darko.audio/2020/01/raspberry-pi-audio-streaming-101/


I just set up a Raspberry Pi with RopieeeXL. It's connected to my DAC via USB.  I stream Foobar, Roon and Audirvana presently.