I have been tinkering around with Volumio for 3 years now using raspberry pi, Asus Tinkerboard and multiple x86 itx platforms. Designing and building different enclosures from bamboo/carbon fiber touchscreen enclosures to gutting a Vintage Sansui RA-500 “Reverberation Amplifier” to make the volumio blend in with my buddies audio equipment.
I love music, basically been my goto source to unwind and relax. Late 60’s - 70’s - 80’s music was the best.
Going from 8 tracks, vinyl records, cassettes, CD’s, Win-amp to Volumio over the years has been interesting journey. Going from computers that run programs off cassette tapes/ cartridges , to mac book pros, ipad / iphones etc. Technology is great. Instead of buying expensive non upgradable music servers, the correct answer is this free open source project.
But the main reason i really enjoy Volumio, is i hate incomplete over complicated hifi players that don’t life up to the hype. So far Volumio has stayed on top of there product and great stream of updates and new features, while retaining easy to use interface. With a programming/developer background, you remove creativity and passion from a project you end up with poor product.
But… these players i have used that just failed miserably
-> Olive One hi res player: Poor interface, unfinished features and loves to lock up.
-> Cocktail Audio. Tiny Screen, hard to navigate, over complicated / poor documentations
-> Nativ Vita. Great looking device, great potential. But… slow UI, crashes, underpowered processor hasn’t seen a update in over a year. When you contact them and ask a question they claim you get frequent updates and best sounding device ever made. Im sorry, but Dragonfly cobalt DAC sounds 1000% better then Nativ Wave DAC.
OK i might have a grudge Against Nativ Vita. Sorry, but i hate hype, reminds me the Hype Stickers on Vinyl Records, you get home and the record was waste of money.