Mac Mini Front End Vs NDX

Posted by: Foxman50 on 14 May 2015

Well after the last few weeks trialling my old Windows laptop running JRiver, i decide to take the plunge and jump in at the deep end with a Mac Mini. Having never used a Mac this was quite a leap of faith. Sorry SteveJ clearly not as patient as i thought

Anyway being impatient as i clearly am i switched the thing on, its booted by the time my rear hits the seat, and installed JRiver and started to listen. Oh no what have i done this has turned out to be a mistake. The sound is thin though with bass, harsh and noisy. Lets not panic, get on net and read up.

After a couple of days reading i find a few tweaks and tips which i implement and things start to get better. The thinness has gone and so has the harshness. The sound is pretty good but it seems to have a very noisy background, it has also started to get the odd pause in the sound every minute or so which is only rectified by a reboot. No happy at all.

More reading and i come across a user guide for Audirvana, and there right at the bottom "Plug The DAC on a dedicated USB bus". OK read how to do it, easy enough although it took a bit of trial and error To get the right port.

Sit back, press play. Oh my oh my big grin on my face. Now this is what i'm looking for. Finally i have found it, that depth that emotional connection of the NDX but with that clarity that openness that lack of grain I've been trying to get too.

Its taken a few days, but as Sister Sledge said "I'm lost in music". For me this wins over the NDX in so many ways. This is gonna remain my front end for some time me thinks.

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by Wat:

Audirvana sounds better than J River Media Centre imho - it uses the iZotope SRC professional rendering engine, whereas JRMC uses Core Audio so sounds same as iTunes (effectively just a different front end). JRMC on a PC is better than it is on Mac at this time, but Audirvana on a Mac is best I've heard (not tried Amara). That is not to say either iTunes or JRMC are bad - anything but: more that Audirvana is superb.

If you are interested in song lyrics then try iTunes with the Singer Song Reader app - fantastic imho and free.

Enjoy MacHugo or are you going for MacDave?

Thanks Wat, i would and will try Audirvana but at the moment i can only control via ipad. I have read an app will be released imminently but until then I don't want to try it and not be able to use it.

i tried to control the mac from ipad but its not really a usable option, at least not for me.

Dave hmm, the name, the looks its not really tugging at my heart. Now the sound, who knows.

would you have any tips/tweaks for mac setup.

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Halloween Man

what is a dedicated usb bus? how do you know which usb port is on a dedicated usb bus?i'm currently using the optical out and itunes\apple lossless. im suspicious of any software claiming better sound quality given the optical output and itunes is bit perfect with zero electrical noise.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by Halloween Man:

Im presuming by dedicated it means no other devices are on the bus. Multiple usb ports maybe on the same bus/hub internally. If you goto the Audirvana site and look for the user manual, on page 38 it shows you how to check.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by dayjay

Forgive my ignorance but is it possible to point the Mac and audiovarna at a nas via Ethernet?

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by dayjay:

Forgive my ignorance but is it possible to point the Mac and audiovarna at a nas via Ethernet?

For storage and in folder location or with minimserver UPNP. Pretty sure you can with the folder location but not UPNP. But JRiver does both and I'm using the UPNP option and it works flawlessly.

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Wat, can you tell me if there is a volume control within Audirvana. Just had a thought regarding headphones but i'd need to control volume through the software. JRemote has a control but does not seem to do anything. Maybe a tick box somewhere.

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Paul Meakin

Originally Posted by Foxman50:

Im presuming by dedicated it means no other devices are on the bus.

That's the way it works on Windows.

DAC on USB 2 bus and everything else on USB 3, as the DAC doesn't need the extra bus speed.

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by dayjay

Originally Posted by Wat:

Neither iTunes nor Audirvana use UPnP - but you can point them wherever you want .... you would need to have sharing setup (which is easy) and then you could point to a NAS or storage in a far distant cloud (not sure that's a great idea though).

Your NAS is just a file to Mac OS X called /Volumes/<NAS Name>

You can have some files on a NAS, some on your Mac, some on an attached Disk, some on a USB stick (even if it is one album) and it'll work - I do not believe this is a good idea though

So Yes - deejay, it'll work.

Thanks Wat, I always feel as though I should try out a mac mini front end to replace my Qute rather than an NDX but, by the soound of it I'd have a redundant Assetnas and would need to buy a hard drie of some description for the Mac. Its a shame you can't home test one

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by james n

Originally Posted by Foxman50:

Graeme

It's under the transport controls - top left of the main window. You can set different settings for it under preferences. I bought the licence for Audivarna last week after trying the demo version for a couple of weeks. I miss the iTunes integration but it sounds better on its own and once the version that can be controlled from an app is released then i'll be a happy chap.

I don't miss my NDX

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by dayjay:

Originally Posted by Wat:

Your NAS is just a file to Mac OS X called /Volumes/<NAS Name>

You can have some files on a NAS, some on your Mac, some on an attached Disk, some on a USB stick (even if it is one album) and it'll work - I do not believe this is a good idea though

So Yes - deejay, it'll work.

Dayjay

i had the same reservation and really wanted to try before buying. I got a second hand one and for a good price i think. So glad i did This really does sound better into Hugo than the NDX does. It has an SSD drive and its ready to play from power off well it must be 5 or so seconds, ill have to time it. I have no idea what Windows is doing when this can boot so fast.

Could you not use your assetnas as a remote drive. Not really sure what it is

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by dayjay

I'm a way off being ready to change but I think, for the price of a second hand mini it may be worth just trying it out first - I suppose I could always move it on if it didn't work for me. Cheers

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by james n:

Originally Posted by Foxman50:

Graeme

I don't miss my NDX

Hi james, sorry did you mean thats where the setting is in JRiver or Audirvana. Yes as soon as the Audirvana ipad app is released i will be trying it out.

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by dayjay:

I'm a way off being ready to change but I think, for the price of a second hand mini it may be worth just trying it out first - I suppose I could always move it on if it didn't work for me. Cheers

That was exactly my thought, but it ain't goin nowhere

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by james n

Originally Posted by Foxman50:

Originally Posted by james n:

Originally Posted by Foxman50:

Graeme

I don't miss my NDX

Hi james, sorry did you mean thats where the setting is in JRiver or Audirvana. Yes as soon as the Audirvana ipad app is released i will be trying it out.

Graeme

Audivarna Graeme. It can either control the volume control in the connected DAC (if capable) or within the software itself

Cheers

James

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Thanks James, that may offer me a solution to keeping Hugo and control volume for headphones from my seat. nice one

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Foxman50

Wat, if you use itunes integration how do you get itunes to handle DSD and Flac files. Or do you use another format.

Graeme

Posted on: 14 May 2015 by Steve J

Graeme,

For DSD files we turn of iTunes Integrated Mode and drag the DSD files from the HD into Audirvana to play without iTunes. I'll show you when you come over.

Steve

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Foxman50

Ah i see, wouldn't it be so much simpler if iTunes just recognized these other file formats. Look forward to it Steve.

Graeme

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Foxman50

Wat

I'm sure my setup really is not optimized at present, so it surprising how good it sounds. I've just gone with how i had it setup on the Windows laptop.

Minimserver transcoding flac to Wav24bit, then JRiver transcoding this to DSD64. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but sounds great.

Will need to have a play around with the settings and see which sounds best. DSD files play as is.

When Audirvana bring out the ipad app ill have a look at that as this seems to very popular.

Graeme

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Mr Underhill

Hi Foxman,

What mac spec did you go for?

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by Mr Underhill:

Hi Foxman,

What mac spec did you go for?

Hi M

It has a bit better spec than i actually wanted but the price was right. Late 2012, 18 months old, i7 2.6Ghz with 256Gb SSD and 16Gb Ram. It came from Apple as is and not modified, not that that should make any difference. Came with magic mouse which is magic, not sure why Windows doesn't have the same, and a bluetooth keyboard.

Have to say it is a great piece of kit and will be multipurpose. Maybe not the best for SQ but i'm happy to lose a little fidelity for the flexibility.

Graeme

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by BigH47

Slightly off track but did the last 2 Yosemite updates do anything for the sound? It seemed to me that my streamer section has had a "lift", since we returned from 3 weeks on hols.

Posted on: 15 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by BigH47:

Slightly off track but did the last 2 Yosemite updates do anything for the sound? It seemed to me that my streamer section has had a "lift", since we returned from 3 weeks on hols.

Can't help you there H as i only had the latest version, so nothing to compare against

Graeme

Posted on: 17 May 2015 by nickpeacock

Graeme,

Should have read this before hijacking another thread...

How does MM compare to PC as source? I think this is where I'm headed to replace ND5...

What do you use as remote control?

Is your MM modded in any way - linear power supply etc?

Nick

Posted on: 17 May 2015 by Foxman50

Originally Posted by nickpeacock:

Graeme,

Should have read this before hijacking another thread...

How does MM compare to PC as source? I think this is where I'm headed to replace ND5...

What do you use as remote control?

Is your MM modded in any way - linear power supply etc?

Nick

Hi Nick

i don't want to compare the PC and MM versions as a PC really won't provide me with the operation i need. Slow boot ups, viruses, constant updates, etc so it had to be a Mac. Having said this its very hard to compare the two as the PC was such an old peice of hardware i was using.

Im using the ipad running JRemote for control and it is fantastic i tell you. Very fast.

My mac is not modded other than having an SSD and lots of RAM. I have been reading up on how to optimise it, but as yet not implented much, other than stopping drives and screen sleeping.

there are plenty of MM on the bay, so i would say give it a go, you can always resell if its not for you.

Audirvana is to release an ipad app apparently quite soon, so ill be trying this as soon as its released.

my NDX is about to go for sale, but i may just see how the DSD. Firmware sounds, if it ever gets released.

Graeme