Well the stream comes from Squeezebox Server on the PC so it's just a hardware-software match rather than a hardware-hardware one like Sonos.

And they're doing pretty well so far, longevity-wise - my SlimDevices Squeezebox 3 has upgraded itself to the latest Logitech-branded firmware and works with a new Boombox, and the latest software & services of course.

(redundant bit) As someone else has pointed out, this is incorrect - the Squeezebox players decode FLAC, MP3 etc. directly from the stream.

(non-redundant bit) And the Squeezebox Server is a very useful central controller for setting up plugins, playlists etc.

I guess the Sonos players can also synch to each other tightly so that playing the same thing in multiple rooms works nicely? The physical Squeezebox players do, but the version you might run on a PC (Squeezeslave) doesn't as far as I know.

And if you're paying in GBP, you'll probably be interested in the BBC iPlayer plugin which is very convenient. No neat Spotify integration yet but it's on the cards.

Is there a purist option which would allow me to flip between merging sources via mixing/resampling and letting the bitstream through to the digital output unmolested (e.g from a FLAC file)?

Part of my confusion is that I don't know how volume is supposed to work with digital outputs - is the mixer supposed to simply reduce the amplitude or does it encode a separate volume setting in the PCM stream?

Ta for any info - I've looked but not found anything in the PA docs.

He isn't.