Interesting article on the 40 year old Apple Lisa (arstechnica), one of the first computers for the public with a GUI. It's impressive how similar it is to modern Apple OS's -- but also to Windows:



The Lisa was a very capable machine. It costed almost the equivalent of $30k in todays money though ($10k at the time). The first Mac that came out shortly later was a lot cheaper, but very limited in comparison:

The seven applications bundled with the Lisa were remarkably full-featured at the time. LisaWrite, the word processor, includes a dictionary and spell checker, and it supports multiple fonts. Everything can be copied and pasted between apps, which is even more amazing since copy/paste didn’t exist yet and had to be invented by Larry Tesler. I could draw a simple ... logo in LisaDraw and easily copy it into my LisaWrite document.

[..]

Hitting its cost target was a good thing for the Mac, which sold much better than the Lisa. But it turned the computer into a less functional machine. Multitasking was gone—the original Mac could only run one application at a time. Autosaving was also gone, as was virtual memory and memory protection and Lisa OS’s resilient file system. It took many years for these features to return, by which time the price of both memory and hard drives had plummeted. In an alternate universe, the Lisa’s price could have steadily decreased while its capabilities kept growing. For example, the Lisa team had plans to extend the single level of undo to an unlimited undo.

This thread is *not* about streaming.
Most HiFi solutions for playing digital music involve streaming. That seems to be the norm these days, so other solutions aren't readily available or well publicised. I'm interested in the other solutions. Solutions that can be added to a DAC/amp combo have various names, and various capabilities. The companies never seem to straight up tell you what the product does -- it's like trying to solve a bleeding crime sometimes, trying to figure out what a HiFi product in this niche actually does ;-)
Hence the query below, and a summary of what I've figured out so far...

So, how do you play high quality digital music, CD quality (or higher) locally?
(I've completely ignored bluetooth below, as it seems to be more suited to mp3's.)

I have to admit I never use headphones (I get a sort of claustrophobia if I wear them more than a couple of minutes) so haven't listed any options involving headphones here:

#1 Most basic option seems to be computer with speakers.

#2 Then there's computer > DAC > speakers (better)

#3 Then there's a dedicated computer option -- often a Pi these days, with a "high hat" DAC for analog output, or a high hat to give a quality digital output. This solution appears to be very capable, with various quality software options. You need to be willing to mess around to get it right, and you pretty much need to leave it running constantly (I find both of these off-putting).

#4 Then there's a dedicated "Streamer" who's focus is normally streaming music from the internet, but usually includes capability to connect to your network (WiFi & possibly Ethernet). Sometimes called a Network Player.
#4.1 Connection options could include simply connecting a USB drive or an SD card (this is of particular interest to me, as I dont have a network as such, and after years of working at home I hate leaving computers running). Sometimes Streamers sound amazing, but they fall down on the software front.
#4.2 Software used by streamers usually works on a tablet or smartphone. Again, the focus is usually streaming, but music on the network is usually well supported as well. Simply connecting SD or USB dive seems to be rarely properly supported.


I'll put a few examples of streamers with Pros/Cons in a spoiler here:



I know this isn't a hifi forum, so not really looking for solutions here - but am generally curious!