Can we continue the mac mini discussion without the animosity

bobster · 4414

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Offline bobster

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Doc,

I understand why you closed the thread.

I'm hoping we can get the discussion going again without the problems in the previous thread.  I want to learn as much as I can to set up a mini-based digital server with my bottlehead equipment.

Jim Rebman - please come back

Bob Musson
Seduction (extended), Foreplay, Paramours, Klipsch Heresys, Orcas, Crack plus HD 600s
Lovin the Bottlehead sound in Maryland


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #1 on: February 13, 2012, 03:11:32 PM
Hi Bob,

I'm here and I do apologize for losing my cool in the last thread and I take my share of the blame for getting the thread locked.

That said, I'm always glad to help with computer audio things.

I do have two mid 2010 mac minis now -- both identical in terms of processors and memory, but one is a fully overhauled monster with Intel 40 g SSD, the Mach2 stripped down Snow Leopard OS, and has had the internal power supply removed and is now powered by an external, high-current, voltage regulated DC supply.  The other is also bone stock from operating system to the original 320 gb 5400 rpm drive.  I will go through that one (which I've been using as a general purpose machine) and turn off all the unnecessary stuff and then A/B it with my Mach2 unit, then I'll slowly add tweaks from the Pi Audio MPC Plus powwer cord to an SSD, and finally some vibration control to see what things are most worth doing and what the bottom line difference is.

I did the before and after with the modified machine, but it's been a almost 20 months and didn't have the ability to do A/B testing then as I only had the one mini.

To my ears the difference was so dramatic that A/B wasn't really necessary, but now that I have the means, I'll work on it.

My system as a whole has also improved significantly since then, so it should be easier to pick out even more subtle details.

AT RMAF 2010 I did hear the same room with all the same gear with 2 different minis -- one stock and one running the Mach2 modifications and again, it was just a much better system with the Mach2.

Now, I'm not suggesting or even recommeending everybody go out and get iin line for the Mach2 modifications, my purpose here will be to see how close to the Mach2 setup I can get for the folks who don't want to plunk down the cash for the all-out package.

This all will take some doing and some time to do the work and then even more to tabbulate the results, but when I'm done I'll post it here for anybody who is interested.

If things work out with reegards to having enough room for the two machines side-by-side, then it should only be a matter of moving the music storage drive and the usb cable to the usb -> spdif converter to the other machine and rebooting.

-- Jim


Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline AudioDave

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Reply #2 on: February 13, 2012, 03:35:12 PM
I am also very pleased that this discussion on the Mac Mini system is continuing.  I am seriously considering the Mac Mini,  all I need is a USB DAC.  Doc ???.....:)



Offline 2wo

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Reply #3 on: February 13, 2012, 05:44:14 PM
Yes I an interested as  well. I am currently using a Linux system. My first effort was to run itunes  on a PC with Apple lossless. It never sounded very good

John S.


Offline InfernoSTi

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Reply #4 on: February 13, 2012, 05:52:34 PM
I, too, would like an open and productive discussion of the Mac Mini.  I've had good luck and noticed a lot of improvement over my Macbook Pro laptop.

John

John Kessel
Hawthorne Audio AMT K2 Reference Speakers
Paramount 300B w/MQ All Nickel Iron,  Mundorf S/G 5.5 uF,  and  Vcap Teflon .1 uF
Auralic Taurus Preamp/Auralic Vega DAC/Auralic Aries Streamer
and lots of room treatments!


Offline bobster

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Reply #5 on: February 13, 2012, 05:57:41 PM
I am currently using an old G4 tower with a firewire drive for the music and music streamer dac.  I suspect that the sound can get a lot better than it is.  I have a mac mini as my desk machine.  Maybe it is time to move it up to the living room and try it in the music system.  The whine of the fan in the tower is very annoying and who knows what other sonic interference is coming out of the old girl.

Bob Musson
Seduction (extended), Foreplay, Paramours, Klipsch Heresys, Orcas, Crack plus HD 600s
Lovin the Bottlehead sound in Maryland


Offline corndog71

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Reply #6 on: February 14, 2012, 04:11:06 AM
This is the direction I'm going in too.  I already have an older (2007) Mac Mini coming from a friend once she's ready to move to another country.  That'll become my girlfriend's music servor.  Eventually I will get a 2010 or 2011 Mac Mini and install the SSD hard drive for the OS.  One of my projects for the year.

The world was made for those not cursed with self-awareness.

Rob


Offline xcortes

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Reply #7 on: February 14, 2012, 04:18:23 AM
Me says this thread is useless without a BH DAC (how's that for some animosity!).

Xavier Cortes


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #8 on: February 14, 2012, 04:44:59 AM
Folks,

I'm getting a lot of requests asking about wich mac mini and which OS, etc. so I'm going to work on a post tat is a compendium of what I've learned -- both from my own experience and from others whose ears and technical abilities I can trust.  I willwrite it offline in some application that will actually let me see what I'm writing and allows me to edit, and then I'll paste it here.  Look for it sometime today...

From there we can move to things like SSDs, tuning the operating system for music, and power supplies/power cables -- always one of the super critical factors in any good digital audio setup.

Hopefully this will give you all a place to start, and I'll strive to keep in mind that some folks will want to stay within a budget and others will want to go for maximum performance.

I'll also state right up front that I'm super sensitive to noisy backgrounds, glare and other nasties, and my personal setup and preferences are based on this, not just some need to spend a lot fof money :-).  In this hobby, as in sailboats, the sky's the limit on what you can spend.

More later...

-- Jim

Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline Doc B.

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Reply #9 on: February 14, 2012, 07:06:36 AM
The DAC is taking another good step forward. John came by the Head Fi meet to show me the new PC board. It needed one last layout tweak, which John has worked out, and then he needs about a month to write some software for it.

Dan "Doc B." Schmalle
President For Life
Bottlehead Corp.


Offline Yoder

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Reply #10 on: February 14, 2012, 08:26:41 AM
Eventually I will get a 2010 or 2011 Mac Mini and install the SSD hard drive for the OS. 

The biggest problem with using non-Apple SSDs is that you have to enable TRIM. Though non-Apple SSDs have been installed in mini's, it was only with OS 10.6.7 (I think) in early 2011 that Apple started using "TRIM" with its own SSDs. For those using third party SSD's you did not, and still do not, have TRIM support from Apple and must manually use a TRIM utility http://digitaldj.net/2011/07/21/trim-enabler-for-lion/ There are many free TRIM utilities out there. Prior to the OS supporting TRIM, then any SSD would eventually begin to slow down. (For those that are not familiar with TRIM, it is kind of like the insert key in that it allows you to write over data without deleting it. The read-write-modify process can drastically reduce performance on an SSD in comparison to writing to virgin cells, and is one of the main causes of SSD performance degradation following extended heavy use. "Having numerous cells filled with junk data means the drive will need to perform more read-modify-write cycles when writing files, causing further performance degradation. A heavily fragmented drive will also be forced to spread files over many more cells, forcing the drive to address all those cells when then reading the data, so subsequently reducing total read speeds too.") Consequently, the SSD may be "working," but it is not working optimally/efficiently if TRIM is not enabled, and the drive will degrade over time.

Regarding the use of two drives in a mini. I use a SSD as my boot/application drive with some of my favorite music on it, and the second drive is used to store my audio or back-it up--depends on how you look at it. I have compared audio playback using an external drive to the internal drive and I could not discern any differences. As it was pointed out in the other thread, hard drives are so quiet compared to those from even two years ago. Also, if one is using "Cache" mode with Amarra, then disk access will be minimized (I imagine 8 Gb of RAM will hold a lot of audio.)

Regarding the optimization of OS X, there are a lot of sites out there that tell you how. What it boils down to is that you want to streamline the OS and turn off everything that isn



Offline Jim R.

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Reply #11 on: February 14, 2012, 09:56:30 AM
Good points about trim -- thanks Yoder.

Just one clarification on disc drives and noise -- I never meant to imply anything about mechanical noise, but the fact is that the more power you draw, the more electrical noise is generated within the machine.  And even brushless motors can generate their own interference, so the main benefits for the SSDs aside from speed are generally lower power consumption and no emi from the drive motor, not mechanical noise/vibration.

As well, all the better players will allow direct memory play from memory -- this is not unique to Amarra.

Again, I want to emphasize that not everybody nor every system will hear every difference I do, but I've put a lot of effort into getting the cleanest, best sound out of my computer music system and if I myself did not hear any significant difference, I diwon't make the recommendation to others.

A lot of this stuff depends on paticular drives, drive interface chip seets, etc. and any deviation from those are not at all guaranteed to give the same results.

I also need to mention that I believe in a very minimalist configuraation -- everything from the machine (except memory), the software, the path from computer to DAC, etc.

It doesn't look like I'll get my initial post done today -- dinner with my sweetie tonight -- so be looking for it tomorrow.

And BTW, I'm not recommending one player over another -- the better ones are all competent but have slight differences in sonic presentation and I encourage folks to download the trial versions and see which ones they prefer, but also know that the next version of any player may be better or worse than the other players -- so like tubes, capacitors, etc., this will mostly depend on personal taste -- they all offer basically the same functionality and similar options, though not always called the same thing from one player to the next.

-- Jim

Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline Jim R.

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Reply #12 on: February 25, 2012, 04:58:56 AM
Folks,

Sorry, I kind of dropped the ball on this -- life got in the way a bit -- but I am working on a series of posts that I'll post in a new thread back in the digital section, and that will cover everything from selecting and configuring and upgrading a mac mini as a music server.

I've started to do this on a few occasions but realize that it can be somewhat detailed and confusing, plus I want to make sure all facts are clear and that all my recommendations will be based on my personal experience as much as possible, along with the experiences of a number of audio buddies around the country who have also switched to mac minis.

So, please hold tight, I want to get this right, but bottom line is that I do believe that the mac mini is the best music server for most people and most people's budgets, though some dedicated, pro and studio workstations may be technicall better in some ways, but as I have no recent relevant experience with the newer generations of those, I won't comment except to say they are way out of my budget and may not even sound as musically engaging.  Just don't know, but for the vast majority of us who want to take our digital playback into the 21st century I truly belive the mac mini is the way to go.

Look for a new thread in the digital area sometime this coming week...

-- Jim

Jim Rebman -- recovering audiophile

Equitech balanced power; uRendu, USB processor -> Musette DAC -> 5670 tube buffer -> Finale Audio F138 FFX -> Cain and Cain Abbys near-field).

s.e.x. 2.1 under construction.  Want list: Stereomour II

All ICs homemade (speaker and power next)


Offline Chris

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Reply #13 on: February 26, 2012, 01:22:58 AM
Sounds Great.....



Offline bobster

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Reply #14 on: February 26, 2012, 02:00:02 AM
Looking forward to it Jim.  Thanks.

Bob Musson
Seduction (extended), Foreplay, Paramours, Klipsch Heresys, Orcas, Crack plus HD 600s
Lovin the Bottlehead sound in Maryland