As a side note, how do people handle HTTPS with private networks (VPN or local) these days? I typically just stick to HTTP, but it would be nice to get rid of the warnings/lock (and I use HTTPS-only mode and firefox seems to require a fresh exception for every port).

It’s the power usage and physical space that puts me off those kind of solutions. Of course, that varies a lot based on your living circumstances (location, whether you own a house, etc).

Personally I use Snapcast as an endpoint, plain MPD for local files, and navidrome for remote access to my library.

That’s where I’ve been heading too. The snapcast client has been a bit unreliable for me on my desktop though (choppy and stuttering) but it’s great in its unix-like flexibility and I’m sure it will continue to get better.

Honestly, I hope that mobile connections in my country are one day: fast enough, cheap enough, and reliable enough that I could just use snapcast remotely and get truly seamless self-hosted streaming but that’s still a long way away I suspect.