I think you can totally do what you're saying and the user interface will be great, although local to the speakers. I'm not sure if iPod DAC can actually faithf

I think you can totally do what you're saying and the user interface will be great, although local to the speakers. I'm not sure if iPod DAC can actually faithfully process 24/96? If so, that's an option via flac. Once you add speakers to your set up, you're looking at the same price as the chain I suggested. The benefits of going the hifiberry route are: - You connect from any device on your network and tell the pi to stream - either from a local NAS or from a hq streaming service like tidal - It can pull and faithfully process 24/96 master streams and MQA - You don't need to use a user interface on the device itself or load files onto it - Bit of hobbyist fun