I use my Volumio Pi to play music locally - directly from a USB hard drive attached to it.
And it has worked flawlessly for me for years in that capacity.
My entire personal collection is stored locally, on a USB hard drive, in LOSSLESS FLAC files (between 16/44k and 24/192k).
I HIGHLY recommend Volumio if you want something that will just sit there and play what you tell it to....
I've haven't updated Volumio in quite some time - since I kind of prefer their older interface to their new one (although that is simply a matter of preference).
In general I much prefer Volumio's interface to the complicated ones with all the bells and whistles on many streamer appliances...
I don't want all sorts of deep content, and album recommendations, and outside links...
I just want to point to a song or album and have it play...
(And, yes, Volumio does display album covers.)
One of the MAJOR benefits of Volumio is that it is "headless"....
This means that you install Volumio on your Raspberry Pi, connect it to your system and your network, and put it in a corner somewhere.
It stays on all the time, so it's always ready when you need it; it uses about as much power as a night light; and a fan is strictly optional.
(I like the original Flirc brand case... which doesn;t need a fan because it uses the case as its heat sink.)
Volumio then becomes a "black box" that you control from ANY regular web browser on ANY device that's connected to your network.
You don't need to install any special apps on any other device to "manage" or "control" it...
The Volumio program contains its own "web server" and you access it like any other web site...
So, for example, I can open Firefox on my PC, click on the Volumio bookmark, tell Volumio to play my favorite playlist, then turn the computer off and go to bed...
This is true for things that you play USING Volumio, either from a local disc, network storage, or a streaming service...
You can also use it as a client for Plex, or Roon, or DLNA... in which case the device sending audio to it would obviously have to stay on.
HOWEVER one thing that new Volumio users should know is that Volumio doesn't support as wide a variety of streaming clients as many commercial "streamers"...
Volumio is essentially a free open source application - so support for various streaming services depends on whether a client for that particular service exists or not.
Volumio supports lots of common services and various methods for accessing files...
But, if you need specific ones, you should make sure they are supported...
(Unfortunately, at the moment, there is no Amazon Music client for Volumio...)
There is actually a subscription version of Volumio - which adds multi-room support.
It's quite economical - and really useful if you subscribe to Tidal and/or QoBuz - since it also adds "native support" for Tidal and QoBuz.
I have an Odroid C4 sitting here idle that I have been trying to decide what to do with, maybe a Volumio player, I'm a total newbie at these things so I need to do some more reading, thing is I don't really need another streamer lol.
Chad