I'm using AnyDesk for the front end. It's on all the PCs in the house, laptop or desktop. VNC would have been fine as well.
I think the main problem my wife has is that she is used to "a box that does the music" and when you turn it on you choose the music "on the box" not from some remote location. That's been the model for ever, from record players, tape decks, CD players, mp3 players, ipods, everything. The little PC is on 24x7 but she can't seem to get the hang of turning on the amplifier and then using her laptop to pick music.
Ideally, I would have a dedicated tablet or whatever just to control the music PC, so that it's physically all in one place. But that's when it starts to get complicated. You have to pair up a screen and computer and a media player that work well without a mouse or keyboard. That might be achievable, but then I want to control Spotify as well (and get at online radio stations). If I could find an all-in-one screen, keyboard, touchpad of a reasonable size, quality and price, I would be happy. I have seen one on AliExpress a while back but it had the look and build quality of Matel toys and users reported it had the speed, accuracy and reliability of Amstrad from the 80s. I also thought about using a tablet as a display with something like Twomon, having the virtual keyboard and touchpad up (Windows in tablet mode is just a mess). I may still try this but it would take a decent sized tablet.
The Raspberry Pi DAC is probably essential. Output from the headphone sockets is OK but inclined to sound transistor radio-ish if you feed it to a worthwhile sound system. HDMI is probably better, but then you're mucking around with an odd audio out unless your amp (or whatever the target is) has an HDMI input. I'm told that the big problem with the Pi is the USB power, which is supposedly noisy and not designed for audio. then again, others disagree. So...never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead |