Hey man. Others may be able to help me here. So I have been listening to a lot of music on my new components. It sounds incredible. However, when using my headphones I can tell a stark difference between 48khz and 96khz. My TMC AV does 96khz, but optical is limited to 48. I am pretty sure that because of the TV the other options are also limited to 48. I looked at like, high end component media players and the prices are a joke. I wouldn't mind so much, if I did not have a dizzying collection of high end sound cards that are all DAC, have switch out OP AMPs and can all do 192khz (which is wasted I admit, I can't tell any difference over 96). So I am going to build some sort of HTPC component. Only I don't want it to do video, as VLC over my NAS is fine for that. I just want a music player than can play at 96khz. This pretty much rules out Windows. It's bloatware IMO. I did find a specific build of Linux that was built solely for audio duties, but it's 250 euro and apparently it's not even very good. So here is my question. Is there a way of setting up any flavour of Linux you like and getting it to auto boot and full screen an audio app? Also, is there any way of using like, a remote control on Linux like a media centre one? I've settled on the hardware. Just a cheap I3 and ITX board and 4gb are fine, but there's no point putting out the cash if I cannot use it the way I want to. Ideally I want a 5" screen in the front that does everything, rather than having to break out my HDMI switcher box as my TV is full. I've looked at using a Rpi, but getting PCIE into it seems awful difficult and I do at least have basic knowledge of Linux. Like, I can install it and download anything it needs to get it updated etc which is a start I guess. Arbroreal has a old pro logic amp thing I am going to strip out and use as a shell, so I will just build the hardware as I go.
ive not used raspberry pi for audio related stuff but it seems like an RPI board and Hifiberry addon or a dac berry pro+ addon a small screen is what you want https://thepihut.com/products/hifib...MI-8zm-q-l7QIVhO3tCh3L5QYVEAQYASABEgLoN_D_BwE https://volumio.org/product/osa-electronics-dacberry-pro-plus/
Thanks @Yaka Got the hardware side sorted now. By the time I added all of the things to that it would have cost more and done less. Won't need a screen now. Will connect it to the TV.
for a headless server setup im hearing good things about https://www.daphile.com but the longest one thats been around is https://www.musicpd.org/ and has few diff clients like gnmpd theres also deadbeef but is supposed to finicky to set up
