Well the BeagleBone was trivial to set up (tho it took a little time to download, unzip, write the MicroSD card and program the board.)
The first time I played some 44.1 with JRiver everything was going great until I tried to play DSD I’ve not gotten JRiver to work with it again And JRiver takes many minutes to see the BeagleBone. (I blame all of this weirdness on JRiver, not the BeagleBone, I often get the same hassles with the Bridge or the Bridge II and JRiver.)
On the other hand the BeagleBone shows up instantly in windows explorer and using it with foobar2000 was trivial, just select the UPnP: NetAudio device, 32 bits and hit play (if you select 24 bits you get garbage). Heck even DXD (32 bit PCM @352.8k) works great. And best of all, there’s no waiting for queuing, and like with the bridge, foobar2000 and the BeagleBone play gaplessly.
Every once in a while instead of playing I get a blast of noise. It goes away when I change tracks. I’ve got no idea where that’s coming from… It hasn’t happed for a while now, perhaps it was a left over from having 24 bits selected in foobar2000…
Sounds pretty good with the cheap recommended 5V supply. I’ll try it with a linear supply a little later. I just want to get used to it first. I haven’t directly compared it to the Bridge II (or I) yet either, tho things sound good enough that my wife and I are just listening… (The alarm clocks in “Dark Side of the Moon” just caused her to jump, even tho she surely knew they were coming.)
My setup is kind of silly at the moment: Music from NAS -> Wireless bridge -> PC (with foobar2000) -> USB -> Docking Station -> Ethernet -> Ethernet Switch -> BeagleBone -> USB -> DirectStream. The music swirls around the room a few times before ending up at the DAC
I’m also backing up the NAS up over the wireless with my PC to external USB powered drives at the same time. Doesn’t seem to affect the audio.
I got DSD128 to work with a Core i7 Win 7/64 desktop (FLAC files on 7200 RPM internal drive) but not my 2011 Mac Mini (also Core i7 but not as powerful) with AIFF files on a relatively slow USB drive. The latter would get halfway through a song and skip to the next. The Mini was much closer to the DS and only had to go through one switch whereas the PC was a little farther and had to go through two. I thought Bridge II sounded better in general (couldn’t play the DSD128 files on it, of course). DSD64 and 192/24 PCM files played fine from the Mini through the BeagleBone. Both computers were running JRMC 20 with JRemote. I think I tried the Mini with minimserver and Bubble UPnP and DSD128 didn’t work that way either.
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Hi Ted - I’m playing around with the beaglebone too and the directstream. When I shut the beaglebone down when connected to the directstream, it freezes the dac. I need to reboot to unfreeze. This happens regardless of whether i simply unplug the beagle from the ac or if i shut it down with the power button.
I’ve not gotten JRiver to work with it again 
And JRiver takes many minutes to see the BeagleBone. (I blame all of this weirdness on JRiver, not the BeagleBone, I often get the same hassles with the Bridge or the Bridge II and JRiver.)