Raspberry Pi (4 or 5) as a music player - Any thoughts?

[Baldo]

I'm thinking of building a dedicated music player and am looking at the Raspberry Pi.

Al the machine will be doing is acting as a controller to read Flac files from the USB drive and send them to a hi end DAC, perhaps an RME. The analogue output of the DAC will then be sent to the Preamp.

The R Pi would run its own Linux OS and I will use the Jriver music player as the interface.

Any thoughts on this?

Do I really need to wait until the R Pi 5 comes out or should I just go with the R Pi 4 for now?

Odd topic I know but hey, thats what forums are for, aint they???

[The Elf]

Pi4 would do it, but having trodden this way myself...

I would suggest installing a Plex server. It makes life much easier. I dithered about it for a while, but it was a good decision. Now my music follows me everywhere I need it to be.

There are plenty of Pi4/Plex guides on YouTube.

[Baldo]

I don't want a Plex server or anything like that just that. I want a stand alone music player that just plays music. I don't really need it to do anything else.

As a matter of interest, how was your Pi4 experience? Was it time consuming? Was it what you expected?

[The Elf]

Plex just takes all the pain out of it, but it's your system.

I had a couple of Pi4s, but I ditched them for a Pi400, which is more suited to my needs. My Pi400's audio is just routed through HDMI to my AV amp.

[sonics]

Presumably this is a project for it's own sake? The easiest way would be to use an old phone or tablet, of course. It all seems quite time-consuming otherwise.