Apple iMac/Mac Mini

quote:

Originally posted by Justin9960:
Hope you are all well.

I would like to pick your brains if i may. Having been deliberating over a storage device for some time, i finally have the funds (helped when Pink Triangle/SME 1V sell) to buy something.

I am leaning towards the iMac, as a storage device, but also because it would be used as a computer which would sit on a desk in the study. However the desk is about 7 metres away from my Naim DAC in the lounge. I would apprieciate your thoughts on the following;
1, would an iMac sound as good as a Mac Mini?
2, Does it have a digital out?
3, How much would Airport Express degrade the sound?
4, What would be the best way to connect via a wired link to DAC, and would the cable length needed (7 metres) be too detrimental to the sound?
5, Could it be controlled via iPhone?
6, any good sounding other alternatives iv'e missed?

I am ultimately after the best sound quality, but as i say, an Imac in the study would get more use than a Mac Mini on the hi-fi shelf. But it has to sound good!

Sorry for all the questions, but i have saved for a while and can't afford to get this wrong.
Your help as ever, very much apprieciated.

Regards

Justin

I may be of some help here as I have both

1 - There is no difference in sound
2 - They both have digital out
3 - I would not bother with AE, they are quite tempramental
4 - Best way to connect is via a Hiface from the USB out, I recently brought one they are excellent. Not sure about the cable length as my mini sits next to the DAC
5 - They both can via Apple iremote, which is a fantastic tool, sit back, relax and press the screen, it reads the itunes library on the mac
6 - Cant answer that as I am a mac man and dont like windows, I use it all day at work and hate it. There is a squeezbox which can run wirelessly, but I would hook the mac to the DAC via a hiface

The macs are excellent computers, I use the mac mini for the hifi only and the imac in the study, I did start with an imac and later brought a mini, you pays your money and takes your chance

Hope this helps. BTW if your in the midlands you can always come and have a listen to my set up, Mac mini, Hiface, CA Dacmagic, Nait XS and a very redundant CD3.5 never gets used now adays!

Lee

Hi Lee,

You absolute gentleman, that really helps me, thanks.
I am thinking the same as you and go for the iMac, and if needs be possibly add a Mini in the future. I guess i just need to check the cable length, and any affects it might have.

Would love to get an iPad to control it with, but that can wait for now.

Thanks again so much!

Best regards

Justin

Hi Lee,

Do you RCA or BNC Hiface? Is one meant to be better than the other.

Thanks

Justin

Guys,

Sorry, just seen post relating to this.

Justin

I used 5m USB cable from an old iMac to a Stello DAC for a while and it worked out just fine. Probably better to have long USB cable and shorter SPDIF connections.

These days I use an iPad to remote control the latest Mac Mini.

quote:

Originally posted by Justin9960:
Hi Lee,

Do you RCA or BNC Hiface? Is one meant to be better than the other.

Thanks

Justin

I use the RCA connection since my DAC has this and not BNC. It sounds fantastic even though my DAC is only an entry level one. I am planning an upgrade later on in the year to an nDAC or a Weiss

Hope this helps

Lee

Justin - if you can dedicate a computer just to music then you'll find it very worthwhile. A Mac mini can sit in the hi-fi rack, its silent (even more so with an SSD) and can be run headless so you can control it from your iMac or from a iPhone / Touch. Put in as much memory as you can, run the bare minimum needed to play music and dont have it doing other tasks whilst doing so - it'll sound better that way.

James

quote:

A Mac mini can sit in the hi-fi rack, its silent (even more so with an SSD)

Is it easy to change the drive on the new mini? Doing so on my old PowerBook required moving 42 screws so I decided against it; if they have made it easier (hopefully they have) or you can buy a new Mac Min/SSD then that is attractive.

I dont know about the new slim Mini (although RAM is easy to change) - the older version tooj about 1/2hr to do. I'm curious with the new one as to how much noise it will make, now the PSU is internal ?

James

Thanks all for your advice so far,

If i went the iMac route, the computer would be being used for other things (internet etc) whilst i was playing music. Would this reduce the sound quality?

Although music replay is the main reason for buying it, i can justify the price more, on the basis it will be used for other things. It would be a big stretch to buy iMac and Mac Mini together.

Any thoughts as well regarding what i should be spending on digital cable, i.e 7 meters of DC1 is going to cost a huge amount!

Regards

Justin

Regards

Justin

quote:

If i went the iMac route, the computer would be being used for other things (internet etc) whilst i was playing music. Would this reduce the sound quality?

The more you do on a Mac the more the performance of other apps will suffer - whether this suffering is enough to be an annoyance only you can say ... I find that on a dual G5 PowerMac I have drop out on a downloaded training video if I play it while downloading large files. Using two firewire devices at the same time can also cause problems despite the theory.

I'm avoiding long S/PDIF cables - I think 5m USB (not sure you can use longer within the spec) would be your best bet. Then S/PDIF the remainder using a converter like the hiFace between the cables.

A Mac is different from CD player in that it is never as consistent - if you check its process table several times you'll see it keeps changing and if you run applications then it will change even more. OS X is far from ideal, but Windows is worse: nonetheless folk here are using both quite successfully and enjoying the results.

My ideal Mac solution would have all the non-music playing elements deleted and would use a few terabytes of Raid 1 of directly attached SSD rather than old fashioned hard disks - so it would silent and have no moving parts. However, you can stray far from the ideal and still have a great system.

One thing you could do is clone your Mac on to a firewire drive then boot from the external drive for music and from the iMac for other things or vice versa. Cloning is dead easy - I use Carbon Copy Clone, which is free.

I use my imac to run adobe illustrator, indesign, aperture, safari and mail all at once very often. Also live interior 3D and sketchup. I also play music at the same time being streamed from a nas to songbird and outputted via digital.

I have never heard a 'loss in sound quality' skips, trips or anything else.

I put so much pressure on my imac sometimes its paging ram to disk left right and centre and still neary a skip from the music. Contrary to an audiophiles purist idealism, the playback of music on modern computers is like a stream of piss in the sea.

Those that do experience drop outs or what ever need to look at console and activity monitor to see whats gone wrong. Because its an error not a given.

ROTF is running a G5, which in computing terms is old school. Even a mini intel 1.6 core duo (quite old now) wil breeze through these things.

quote:

Contrary to an audiophiles purist idealism, the playback of music on modern computers is like a stream of piss in the sea.

It is. Bits are just bits aren't they ?

Doing it properly isn't. Give it a go sometime.

James I am not sure what you are getting at there, please expand?

I have a mac mini that has one application running, to play music. It works fine.

So does the iMac when running multiple apps.

You will need to explain further as to why there would be a difference just because I have adobe illustrator running as well. To my primitive mind the 'bits' are delivered in packets in what ever file wrapper via ethernet to the receiving application and then delivered via SPDIF to the hifi. Because I am drawing pretty lines at the same time has no effect on this process what so ever. Please explain why it does have an effect and how this transpires in the sounds we hear. If I have illustrator running what effect on sound can I expect to hear? If I nkow what to listen out for I might be better prepared.

I will except that if ones computer simply cannot cope then something has to give, but if your argument is akin to a fly stopping a train then sorry I ain't buying it.

Oh Gary i agree - on my work machine i run all my apps i need to do my job and if i get the chance i listen to music via a crappy little USB DAC - it plays music whatever i do. Same as my Mac mini does but i find it sounds better when its not doing anything else when playing music - why it sounds better, i dont really know and at at this time on a Sunday night i can't really be bothered to explore. Give me a few hours with a spectrum analyser, a scope and a few RF sniffers and i could probably give you an snswer.

Easy - it sounds better while you are not working because you can concentrate on listening!