Don't panic. There are plenty of SBs on the secondhand market.

WRT squeezelite, I suggest reading and participating in the thread I
linked. The application is quite recent, the author (Triode) has
implemented some features, some more will be, others won't. This being
said I suppose the delay setting would have an effect, noticeable at
startup, but I don't think it will help much with sync (where drift is
the real issue). I may be wrong.

About RT. Roughly, the OS slices time in little bits and allows each
application to run for a short period of time. There is 1) no guarantee
which application will be chosen to run next, and 2) no guarantee the
application will finish its task in the allotted time. You can see how
this would help drift happening.
With linux you can improve issue 1) by using the chrt command on a
process. Triode seems to recommend using "chrt -f squeezelite.." (i.e.
using the Sched_FIFO policy), you'll see that in the thread. 
To solve problem 2), you need to have applications and the OS designed
with this specific goal. Linux isn't deterministic, but with fast enough
hardware (and slim enough tasks) you can make this a non-issue. It
*might* be possible to further improve sync by using a linux kernel
compiled with RT-like options (making it a bit more deterministic at its
core), but I foresee a lot of pain and time spent testing if you go the
custom kernel way.

To sum up: I'd try with various SBS options, real-time scheduling of
squeezelite, and getting rid of unneeded tasks. If sync was still not
good enough, then I'd get a hardware player.


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