Before investing into something, how about you check first the Daphile OS project? It's free, runs on a standard PC or laptop using bootable usb drive.
Few months ago, I was scouting for a headless music server/player but most of them are either expensive or have some trade off. That time I wasn't interested on pc setup. All I want is a "device" which i just power up , sit on my couch and control via my android phone.
Fortunately Daphile OS can do all of that plus tons of other features that i'm still exploring at the moment.
I was fortunate that it loads on my 4years old vaio 11" laptop. superpro usb dac is also detected effortlessly. to my ears it sounded good considering it cost me nothing.
Again this OS is free, you can easily make a bootable usb so you can test it without formatting your pc/laptop.