[kiririn]

This is missing a good justification for digging into realtime processing. For me that was to create a DIY receiver, so the equaliser/room correction needs to happen quickly and consistently to maintain lip sync. I'm not sure it's quite so justified for an audio/music server

FreeBSD never crossed my radar as a viable platform for realtime audio processing, instead I had good luck with Linux + RT patch + Pulseaudio + https://github.com/bmc0/dsp. (Pulseaudio really shines in this kind of use case, will resample to correct for slight differences in input/output clocks etc)

Also an aside, "USB cable: WireWorld ULTRAVIOLET 8" is a controversial thing to mention

[frantathefranta]

I expected that USB cable to be $250+ but I see them for $50-$70 which is still super expensive for a USB2.0 cable. But I guess if you like the look of it, it makes sense.

[matsz]

Audiophile USB cables are pure placebo, there's no controversy here. Changing the medium doesn't magically make digital signal higher quality, only reduces data loss, if anything.