Well, he is almost 8 and is smarter than me by a mile, trying to brew up cold fusion in the kitchen etc.
For his Xmas present, we are going to build a pair of BBC LS3/5A clones, most of the parts for which are sourced out through Arts Express, basic 4” mid and a little horn tweeter and basic 2 way crossovers.
I had vacillated about getting him a little streaming amp but since I had built several Rpi Roon endpoints I thought that it might be fun for us to build a streaming amp with the Hifiberry amp HAT.
Honestly, he doesn’t have the patience yet to slog through Roon, but I’ll probably drop the codec in there for later. It will be hardwired ethernet for good connection.
What I’ve never done before is use Spotify connect, wifi, or Bluetooth as a signal input. Is it also a pretty straightforward codec to copy and paste? My guess is his generation will be all about “Alexa play Sirius XM.” So, I guess if I had an Echo dot and a Bluetooth codec, I’d be good to go. Does such a thing exist?
Or Moode that has a pretty UI for local playback next to the features mentioned above. However you may not even use it if you’re using Roon or Spotify Connect.
I think he would take to Roon like a duck in water and be teaching you all about it in a few days.
It boils down to how he is going to interact with his new stereo system, it sounds like via some sort of networked “controller” which, if he has a tablet, phone, or computer, well, Roon is ideal. Especially since you already have it in the house.
How does your 7 year old play music now? That’s what they will want to do with the new stereo. Do their friends listen to music? What do their friends use? You’ll need to support that as well.
Honestly, if they are comfortable with this stuff give them the tools to burn images and let them figure it out. Otherwise, match what they are familiar with so they actually use the thing. You don’t know how many people I know who listen to music from their phone speakers because they can’t be bothered with Airplay.
Spotify connect works great and is easy to use. So a desktop/laptop (do kids still have those?) + dac and spotify desktop app (very stable) or one of the Rpi solutions mentioned (no experience with that).
