This use of the word "renderer" is a little obscure, can you clarify ? Thanks.
(All I find on references is:)
I meant renderer as in DLNA renderer (one of the media network settings in JRiver), but it works nicely as a player for local files too.
The bottom line is that a pi will play music nicely if no transcoding or resampling is involved. It can handle light transcoding or resampling, but if you push it, it gets iffy (i.e. I wouldn't count on using one to transcode DSD). But for playing files in their original format, with little or no DSP they're really quite solid little devices. A Pi 2 at stock speeds has a JRMark in the 400's, but that can be pushed up into the 500's with overclocking:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=54396.msg658407#msg658407I use one in my office with a USB hard drive and USB DAC attached (I control the whole thing with JRemote on my phone) and it works great. I have two at home that I use as network players/library clients meaning that they're hooked up to DACs, but have no storage attached. They are clients of my main server MC instance, and I control them through JRemote as well, and they also work nicely (once some configuration hiccups were worked out). In both cases this is with a 50k+ file music collection.
I'm currently working on a pi-powered "tablet" that's at the proof of concept stage. It works as an MC player with touch controls right on the device, I should have a thread up about that soon.
For all of the ins and outs of configuration see my detailed how-to guide on the Linux board:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=99370.0Some detailed performance measurements:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=97100.0Some details and pictures of my office build:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=96133.0