My Plan on Mac Mini as Music Server - opinions please

mikapoh, surely if you are buying the latest mac mini it will come pre-installed with mountain lion not snow leopard?

If I understand right, you are planning to store your library on WD my book live. Surely if the mac mini is to be used only as a transport/music server you would be much better using that (mm) to store your library on and use the WD as back up for your files? If you are using the mini headless then share the screen with your pc to control your Itunes library. I rip my music to alac and not aiff as I cant tell the difference and the file size is smaller. My 500gb hard drive is half full i.e. 765 albums = 244 gb's so plenty of room left there for another 800 cds! 

I use a headless mac mini with an  M2Tech Young dac with bit perfect installed and found the sq to be as good If not better than my CD5X/FC2X and using the remote app on an iphone and ipad certainly alot more convenient and fun,so much so,that I sold the cdp and have not regretted it! 

Also with a couple of airport expresses and some cheap active speakers can access and listen to music from itunes or iradio in other rooms of the house (although I have to disable bit perfect to do this).

I have found, as I'm not completely computer literate (although getting better) I keep everything as simple as possible and with Apple this is relatively easy as "it just works"! This forum helped me a lot 

especially with the help of, in particular Guido Fawkes and Simon-in-Suffolk, the gurus of computer audio!

Good luck and I'm sure you'll get a lot more help on here!

Andrew.

Andrew Porter, you have me in anxious moment after reading your first sentence. Upon re-checking it is Mountain Lion pre-installed. Sorry for confusion, my bad.

Thanks Andrew for your valuable feedback.

Indeed, I have followed closely the posts written by Guido Fawkes and Simon. I think they know exactly what they write and are very knowledgeable in this computer audio field. Mr Guido would prefer to focus on more practical side of things such as looking at nDAC to speakers end or even speakers placement rather than wasting too much time on different players (ie, PM, Audirvana, Amarra, MP etc), 24/96 to 24/192 sampling rates, or even manipulate the power supply of Mac Mini. IMO, I am quite comfortable what he writes so far.

Back to topic, in fact, I have followed and have tried to build a digital front end system based on his recommendation. Among them is using Wireworld Supernova 6 optical cable and using external HDD to store music library. The aim of storing in external hard drive is to avoid interference with the boot files. I hope I have understood that correctly.

It is good to know your Mac Mini & M2Tech Young DAC is on par with CD5X/FC performance. My CD5XS when routed to nDAC using DC1 can produce quite a stunning result. That's why I use it for benchmarking.....I would be pleased if my Mac Mini can achieve 80% of its performance....

All sounds good, optical from the Mac is limited to 24/96, you may better better sound using a USB tovs/pdif converter, I use an M2Tech Hiface in my office, reclocks and allows youto play 24/192.

H

Hi mikapoh,

I have a quite similar setup: nDAC fed from CD5XS and Mac Mini (but via M2Tech Evo USB SPDIF converter). I use the internal 1 GB HD of the Mac as storage for ALAC files. The SQ is at least as good as from the CD5XS. As playback software I use Audirvana which switches of of services and tool of teh MAc that are not necessary for music playback. I even have internet radio. But as Audirvana cannot play MP3 I had to install a second connection between the Mac Mini and the nDAC. For this I am using the small and cheap Matrix USB SPDIF converter. Audirvana is configured to play via the M2Tech Evo and iTunes plays internet radio via the Matrix. Works perfectly (well, I have to switch the nDAC entries to change betweem HD playback and radio, but that's OK).

Best regards, mipi

HI mipi, this is very encouraging. I would certainly like to hear my Mac Mini as competitive as my CD5XS as digital transport. I have converted my files to AIFF stored in external USB 1TB hard drive. So far, stream the files over my home wireless network from PC to the ext HDD is smooth. I use the free Teamviewer to control Mac Mini headless from my iPad 3. Right now I just have to wait for my Wireworld Supernova 6 optical to arrive......

Oh, I have attached a mouse to the Mac Mini to wake it up from its deep sleep. Remote App and Teamviewer seem cannot wake it up whichever I try.

Remote.App  does not wake up my Mountain Lion Mac Mini 2011 too.

With wireless devices you have to have an airport or express in the mix to wake on lan, wired should be ok what ever the router.

This is a Mountain Lion bug (type 'mountain lion not waking" in your favourite browser)

Hi Mikapoh

To reduce noise in mac, you can install additional SSD drive and make it bootable and boot from this SSD drive. That will reduce the noise to great extent. Secondly, you can choose player which allow memory playback so that there is minimal internal HDD noise while playback.