If you're a kinaesthetic learner, you will only understand and grow your skills by doing it, rather than just reading about it. Buy a cheap Pi kit and build yourself a streamer. You will learn a hell of a lot about it and be less fearful of not being able to maintain it. It's inexpensive and great fun.

The simple reality is that some of us with our power supplies, reclockers and noise treatments have gone way, way beyond the sound quality capabilities of a decent CD player. The only reason I sold my Ayre C-5xe MP SACD player, once a Stereophile A+ component, is that my Pi-based streamer had overtaken it quite some time ago and it couldn't even dream of keeping up with the Asus I am now running.

I just have a USB cable going from my laptop to my DAC.
Sorted, no hassle and it sounds great.

You can add all sorts of widgets later to make it even better.

Thanks for your replies and advice.

I don't think i am kinaesthetic as i don't meet the criteria   Don't take this the wrong way but until i have surpassed the level of replay from my VERY modified cdp by trying streaming for myself, i cannot accept that it is better. I know, fuzzy logic but it's the way i work. I have a love affair with my cdp as i have done all sorts to it and taken it in a sonic direction that i hugely prefer over what it was or any other cdp i have heard. 

I don't like things that i can't modify. Things are engineered to a price and i want to be able to improve things to my own taste often by doing things which make the unit not compatible with any other systems. That's the way my system largely is as large compromises are usually made to make products compatible with any situation they are likely to be used.

I don't feel that is achievable with streamers. I may be wrong. I know enough electronic knowledge and have quite a lot of experience of building power supplies, modifying everything i own. 

Also i aim for the best sound achievable. I see no sense in jumping blind in to the low end of the market where performance is curtailed. I might as well get something that is capable of the best sonic reproduction even if i have to build half a dozen linear power supplies for it . No disrespect to anyone but i don't want to be continually swapping out cables, dac's, pi's, tinker boards. Simplicity is surely the key to all this ?


Several illogical dilemma's rolled up in to one large one 

Just to break one misconception: the SOC (System on a Chip) used inside even major brand streamers is relatively low power, considerably lower in power than the ARM processor inside the Asus Tinker Board S. From a processing power point of view, there is nothing 'low end' about the Asus.

Since you're starting from nothing, I'd actually recommend a simpler route. Does your DAC have a USB input? If so, do as Jerry mentioned and simply connect a PC or a laptop to your DAC via USB. Download a free music player like Foobar (link) onto your machine, use it to rip a couple of CDs so you have some files (guide here), and then play the files, and see what you think. There are countless ways in which you'd be able to improve on this very basic set-up (software tweaks, hardware changes, more software tweaks, more hardware changes, etc), but I'd recommend just taking the simplest route first, if only as an experiment and to give you a feel for the territory.

Thanks again   I wasn't asserting that the tinker or Pi are "low end" or anything like that   From my posts you will ascertain that i know very little about the subject.

I don't have a stand alone DAC of any kind  . Only the one in my cdp and that doesn't have any digital in (or out) capability. 

If i can get to the lofty heights that you guys seem to be at with a tinker board then i would go with that for sure.  Ripping Cd's to FLAC would be the place to start i agree and i would need somewhere to store the files.

The Volumio product that John kindly linked to looks interesting. It has a tinkerboard and dac on board. The "hifi" version also has a cd drive for ripping . What are it's compromises and limitations though ? 

Within reason   Looking at the amount of surface mount technology inside it would make it more difficult to trace the power supply circuit and change / add more dedicated psu's and regulators.

5V supplies are no problem. It's the 3 Amp bit that is the tricky bit. I take it only one psu is used with this unit so everything in there shares it ? If so i cansee that as very limiting. The dac would be the obvious bit to separate out. The dac in my cdp only pulls about 60 mA tops which are on three different supply pins. If it is similar then a dac psu would not have to be huge and could use some nice low noise, low power regulators. 

Everything i modify seems to breed psu's like rabbits  That is easy with through hole stuff i have built and modified to date. I have some surface mount experience but not loads.

As people have said, putting the thing together is depressingly easy for those of us who actually like to "get our hands dirty."   My background is as a BT engineer and from there I moved into I.T. and the main reason I resisted the Pi route for so long was that I really couldn't be arsed "working" to get some music out of a silly little box. 

Finally did the deed, and as I said, depressingly easy.  I even found something "complicated" I could do with the files that the Pi uses to configure its bits and bobs, and it made a significant difference; throttling back internal speeds, shutting off the parts of the Pi that are used for video, etc. 

Asus Tinker Board:  Even easier.  No software configuration needed.  The hardest part is putting those fiddly little cases together.  

Digital cables make a difference to sound quality.  A decent power supply makes a difference to sound quality.  A couple of us actually run Tinker Boards using power-banks.

There you go, Stu.  Everything you need to know about making up a streamer.  Of course, you then need loads of files for your file-server to errr...  serve? And something to store the files on, like a NAS or an external USB hard drive.

And a connection to your network (wired is better than wireless if you can manage it) so you can use whatever interface you choose via your PC, or tablet, and...

OK, it's not THAT simple, but taken as individual tasks each step in itself is pretty easy.  Honest.   

Although they say it is easy, I don't understand how a Pi setup works.

So, I did buy a RWAK100s (modified AK100) with toslink out.
Also have an old Macbook Pro, which also has toslink out.
Was thinking of using either of those to a Dac.

But settled on using USB on the Macbook Pro with a Halide Bridge, iFi USB silencer, Audioquest Jitterbug to my Dac.
That is sounding much better than anything I've had previously.