[mindcrash]

> I think Raspberry lost the magic of the older Pis, they lost that sense of purpose. They basically created a niche with the first Pis, now they're just jumping into segments that others created and are already filled to the brim with perhaps even more qualified competition.

I don't think you will find anything on the market enabling you to create your own audiophile quality AMP, DAC, or AMP+DAC for a pretty attractive price except a Pi 3/4/5 with a HifiBerry (https://www.hifiberry.com/) HAT.

[yoavm]

There are some nice ESP-based solutions - https://sonocotta.com/esp-products/

[mindcrash]

HifiBerry is basically the only choice when you live in Europe and do not want to deal with tariffs.