Is hifiberry the best budget sreaming reciever?
I'm fed up of trying to make a echo dot permanently muted work as a Spotify streaming device for my powered speakers. The account management for a multi user household and linking specific Amazon accounts is broken. I want a device that allows basically any user on my home wifi nw to pick a device to stream to like a Chromecast.
I've been still shocked about the cost of a raspberry pi these days, but is 100 dollars for a bundle of components really the best option out there for a straight forward streaming receiver to connect to some powered book shelf speakers? Are there any other options under 100 bucks?
4 replies
I have used a hifiberry before and it works fine. I am not sure what the 'best' alternative udget device would be, but I am also using a Chromecast audio without issues. It is smaller and cheaper than a hifiberry. Sadly, they were discontinued a while back, so you would need to see if you can find a used one.
Is there known long term support for chromecast audio? 70 bucks seems pricey for older hardware where I don't know if I need to worry about updates.
I think they don't offer any support, since they don't sell these things anymore. My Chromecast audio still just works though.
A few months ago, I would have agreed with you. I own 3 hifiberry products and they are indeed awesome. Their own OS is great and they also worked very well with other software. But then I bought a couple WiiM minis. While it's fun to hack around with the pi, the WiiM just works and it does a couple things I could never get the pi to do. In particular, Qobuz streaming in high def and synchronized multi-room streaming.