Naim System based On Mac Mini

Your plan doesn't seem to include a DAC, which you're going to need if you want to get decent sound out of your Mac. There are plenty of people who like the Mac & DAC route rather than getting a Naim streamer. You could consider a V1. If you like what it does, then consider weather you want to get rid of the CD player. 

A Mac Mini makes an excellent source for digital music and Audirvana's also a very good software player. It's worth optimising the Mini for digital music replay, plenty of advice on 't internet.

A V1 is a very good DAC, but for a DAC only it's expensive. However, you may find, as you've got digital-only sources (assuming your CD player's got a digital out?), you can use the V1 as a digital pre-amp and dispense with the 202; well worth a try. However, if you decide to keep the 202 I'd advise going for something like an Arcam irDAC or, if you can stretch that far, a Hugo.

DAC V1 is the best answer to the question.

Hi Andy

Owner of a mac mini - DAC-V1 - NAP140 - PMC DB1i streaming system for the last 4 years or so.

I find it to musically compelling and thoroughly enjoyable.  With the latest DAC-V1 firmware, it sounds far better than it has any right to.  Given the choice of speaker (they are small),  it will not go seriously, party loud, nor will the bass shake the room.  But it does portray the real essence & soul of music beautifully. So yes, I'm a convert.  Bigger speakers, carefully matched to your amp & room, would address both limitations of my set up.

In your case, a mac would certainly work - Tony M knows considerably more on this.  You may follow Tony's advice and add a dac, or follow the integrated DAC+Pre and be happy with a DAC-V1 or the more capable 272.

Plenty of options to deliberate over, all of them viable.

Hope this helps, FT

.... or Roon+HQplayer (instead of Audirvana)....excellent!

 I have a Mac Mini running Audirvana, into Chord Hugo DAC, with a USB to SPDIF convertor/isolator (Gustard U12) in between. I found this combination gives better SQ than did an ND5XS + XP5XS, at significantly less cost, while the MM effectively makes a silent server (late 2012 MM with 8GB RAM and twin 1TB SSDs)

The USB to SPDIF convertor/isolator is to remove RF interference that otherwise you get as a consequence of the power supplies in computers, and mine cost ~£110 from a well known online auction sire (direct from China) and is also available through an online bookshop...

I originally had a cheap NAS (Zyxel NSA 325), which was irritatingly noisy, and planned to replace it with a QNAP silent NAS with SSDs. The MM is virtually silent (inaudible more than 2ft away in quiet room), and it + Gustard + Hugo is similar cost to that + ND5XS alone (without XP5XS).

I use my Hugo straight into my power amp (musical Fidelity P270) without a preamp, which I found beneficial compared to when I had first used it through my preamp - however the benefit or otherwise of that, other than loss of other inputs conveniently switchable, would very much depend on the characteristics of the power amp and preamp you use, and probably only feasible to determine by trying.

The one gripe I have is that Audirvana's library browse facility doesn't allow me to organize albums in the way I'd like, i.e. by folder hierarchy, relying instead on metadata, and a high proportion of my 1000+ albums have incomplete or unsuitable tags. I'm hoping Audirvana will sort this out soon as I really don't want the task of going through my collection changing metadata just for that.

tonym posted:

A Mac Mini makes an excellent source for digital music and Audirvana's also a very good software player. It's worth optimising the Mini for digital music replay, plenty of advice on 't internet.

A V1 is a very good DAC, but for a DAC only it's expensive. However, you may find, as you've got digital-only sources (assuming your CD player's got a digital out?), you can use the V1 as a digital pre-amp and dispense with the 202; well worth a try. However, if you decide to keep the 202 I'd advise going for something like an Arcam irDAC or, if you can stretch that far, a Hugo.

+1. As an alternative to a Hugo, you could also consider a second hand Naim DAC. Best, nbpf

It could be worth looking at an old thread called something like 'why is Hugo better than a Naim DAC'.

I moved from streaming to a Mac mini running Audirvana into a Hugo.  IMHO you'd have to spend a heck of a lot of money on a streamer to beat it.

Not sure if the OP was suggesting running the audio output of MM into the amp? If so, although I haven't tried, it, I believe it would be a very retrograde step in terms of SQ compared to the CD5X  - hence all the suggestions here about DACs, meaning a HiFi  DAC not a computer soundcard.

Which would give you best musical enjoyment, spending the money on a DAC etc and using MM with that as main source in place of CD5X, or retaining CD5X as main source and using your funds to replace the speakers is a different question, and there are many different factors to consider, including whether/when you might be expecting to make any further upgrades in the future, and how important it will be to you to enable buying music by download(or online streaming), and opening the door to higher resolution recordings than CD. 'Source first' philosophy suggests doing the streamer, but sound enjoyment also depends on how much you like the sound of your speakers, and only you can decide if you prefer them or the Credos, or anything else that the secondhand market holds at your price point.

Innocent Bystander posted:

Not sure if the OP was suggesting running the audio output of MM into the amp? If so, although I haven't tried, it, I believe it would be a very retrograde step in terms of SQ compared to the CD5X  - hence all the suggestions here about DACs, meaning a HiFi  DAC not a computer soundcard.

Which would give you best musical enjoyment, spending the money on a DAC etc and using MM with that as main source in place of CD5X, or retaining CD5X as main source and using your funds to replace the speakers is a different question, and there are many different factors to consider, including whether/when you might be expecting to make any further upgrades in the future, and how important it will be to you to enable buying music by download(or online streaming), and opening the door to higher resolution recordings than CD. 'Source first' philosophy suggests doing the streamer, but sound enjoyment also depends on how much you like the sound of your speakers, and only you can decide if you prefer them or the Credos, or anything else that the secondhand market holds at your price point.

Given that the OP already has a mac mini, a somehow diagonal approach (a "source last" one, so to say) could be to first buy an affordable, mobile DAC (one can get a very decent one for slightly more than 200 EUR and, with an headphone output, this could be used later for occasional listening on the road) and check how he comes along with ripping, tagging, Audirvana, mac mini tuning, etc.

This approach would allow him to get the needed infrastructure up and running and to compare a mac mini + USB streaming approach with his current approach with minimal investments.

In a second step (and in a fully functional setup), he could replace the 200 EUR dac with a Hugo, a Naim V1,  a Naim DAC or something else. This would also allow a comparison between these alternatives in a controlled environment.  

which one is best in terms of sound quality, mac mini or macbook pro?

I am at present using the mini with out a DAC streaming the music from iTunes through Audirvana.    It works well but obviously I would like to see some improvement.   Sadly I just do not appear to be using the CDX5.  

Thanks

andyharc posted:

I am at present using the mini with out a DAC streaming the music from iTunes through Audirvana.    It works well but obviously I would like to see some improvement.   Sadly I just do not appear to be using the CDX5.  

Thanks

This is a bit strange because I would expect the CDX5 to sound much better than the bare mac mini. Is it that you do not hear the difference between the two or that you do not care about it? In the first case I would say that there is something wrong in your setup or perhaps in your hearing. In the second case I would say you trade sound quality for convenience or whatever property you find appealing in the mac mini system. In this case I would certainly consider ditching the CD and buying a dac.

I would say i like the MINI simply because of the amount of audio I have on it and the ease of use.  The CDX5 appears to be more of a luxury in some ways.  The CDX5 however does sound better with the majority of CD's I have on  hand compared to MP3's but that may just be due to the bit rate they are sampled at possibly.

andyharc posted:

I would say i like the MINI simply because of the amount of audio I have on it and the ease of use.  The CDX5 appears to be more of a luxury in some ways.  The CDX5 however does sound better with the majority of CD's I have on  hand compared to MP3's but that may just be due to the bit rate they are sampled at possibly.

Do you mean all the music you have on the MM is MP3? If so if it's is higher quality sound you want I suggest upgrading both the MM output (a la discussions above, picking whatever fits your budget) and replacing your MP3 collection with FLAC or WAV rips.

I do have mostly Mp3's or FLAC on the system....

Other then a good DAC I do not see many other ways to easily upgrade the output of the Mac Mini...  Am I missing something???

sharik posted:

 

which one is best in terms of sound quality, mac mini or macbook pro?

 

I can't answer definitively as I haven't heard MBPro, though I see no reason why different - using Audirvana in its highest quality mode the computer's soundcard is bypassed. However in that mode other applications may be disabled, so it might not let you use the computer for anything else simultaneously, if that's what you want. Also, if MBP has an audible fan that may need to be taken into account.

andyharc posted:

Other then a good DAC I do not see many other ways to easily upgrade the output of the Mac Mini...  Am I missing something???

Yes. First, you need to upgrade your source files. You can use .flac for convenience of tagging or .aiff or .wav. But, if you want to improve, it is essential to move to lossless formats. You do not necessarily need to go to 24bit/192kHz but I would, where possible, prefer 24bit to 16bit. Once you are there, you can start thinking about the rest of your replay chain. Best, nbpf

andyharc posted:

Other then a good DAC I do not see many other ways to easily upgrade the output of the Mac Mini...  Am I missing something???

The quality of MP3s is likely to be noticeably worse than lossless formats like FLAC and WAV, though as I said you'd have to re-rip to rectify.

whether adding a better DAC than the MMs own would make any improvement to sound of mp3s  I'm afraid I don't know. Ditto whether lossless formats will sound better through MM's own soundcard, sorry!

I have a 2013 Retina Screen MacBook Pro and it is one of the most electrically noisy devices I use. It's a very capable computer and great for my photography but I keep it well away from my audio (unless I am updating firmware to my Naim streamer). I did try running my Hugo once from it one using the USB and I was completely underwhelmed... I also try and keep the MacBook Pro a little distance away from my valve headphone amps, where the EM fields from the Mac are picked up by the valves... Valves seem quite sensitive to RFI.

Simon

andyharc posted:

I do have mostly Mp3's or FLAC on the system....

FLACs are a good start. Do they sound better to you than your mp3s? If so start ripping more FLACs and enjoy the improvement, then if you want to improve still further look at the separate DAC routes as discussed above. If they don't sound better it answers the question I didn't have an answer to a few minutes ago, and you'll need to improve the DAC to improve sound ...and rip more FLACs!

I have about 200GB of FLAC at the moment..  I have been listening for the last few hours  They are significantly better then the MP3's.  Now how much better would a DAC make it????   

This is directed to the person asking about the Mac Book Pro.....   I had one a few years back and used it for my media files.   The Mac MINI was an improvement over the Mac Book it just seemed a bit nicer sound and was snappier to me.  If that is a way to qualify the sound.  My Mac Book was a 2010 8GB 250 HD, the Mini is a 2012 late edition 16GB  250SSD...   most of my media is now on externals