Ok folks, I'm somewhat back on my feet and am ready to continue this series on choosing and configuring a Mac Mini for use as a music server.
Anyway, a couple of basic principles to go over first:
1) For best sonic performance you don't want your data on the same drive as the operating system and playback software -- this shouldn't be new to anybody who has done computer based audio -- whether for listening or recording -- a separate data drive is always recommended.
2) You want to use an external drive for music storage, and one that is using a different type of interface than your DAC. In other words, most people will be using a USB DAC or USB -> SPDIF converter, so the data drive in this case should be firewire. I can't at this point recommend Thunderbolt as it is relatively untested, though could potentially be the better choice over firewire, though the drives are still really expensive. If you plan to use only a TOSLink output to your dac, then either firewire or USB should work, but even here, the anecdotal evidence is that firewire sounds better.
3) For maximum performance, it is highly recommendede that the external firewire drive use the Oxford 834 chipset -- the Mercury on-the-go portable drives and enclosures from OCW, and the Oyen Firewire 800 mini-pro drives use this chipset, and I've used both and can tell no real difference between hem.
For USB external drives, the WD Passport portable drives always seem to get high marks -- and I can say from my own experience with one of these that it is a nice USB drive.
4) Choose a 5400 RPM drive over a 7200 one -- the speed is of no real consequence except when indexing new music files and the 5400 rpm drives are physically and electricially quieter.
Now, back to the subject of OS/program boot SSD drives...
Not all SSDs are created equal and as technology changes, recommendations are bound to as well. I use an Intel 40 gb drive in my ultra tricked out mini, which has been fine, but right now the best recommendations are the OCZ Vertex 3 and Crucial drives for use in the Mac Minis. 40-60 gb is plenty, so get whatever is less expensive unless you have some need for more storage (some people dual-boot if they don't dedicate their machines to music playback, so you would need a partitiion for an optimized OS instance for music playback, and another for office and home applications. Generally not recommended, but people have done it and like the results, but how to do this and manage it is beyond the scope of this intro article.
Finally, unless you want to go to some fancy cabling and a high quality external power supply for the music storage drive, a buss- powered one is fine. To really get any benefit beyond that you'll need a special FW cable that has no power leg in it, and combine it with an external, linear, regulated power supply, but there is only one such cable and it is expensive. It is BTW, a very nice upgrade for later on. Also, the firewire 800 cables that come with most of these drives are adequate, but I found the cables from unibrain to be a nice improvement without much extra cost. Like the power cable to the mini itself, it is worth playing with both the direction of the FW cable, as well which of the two ports on the external drive you plug it into. The differences won't be earth-shattering, but in the right system, you should be able to hear them, but how much is going to vary greatly from system to system, etc.
If you plan to use a USB external music storage drive, do yourself a favor and get a decent usb cable -- the Wireworld UltraViolet or StarLight with the appropriate connector (B, mini-B, or Micro-B) will be a nice upgrade -- and as with the firewire ports, experiment with which usb port on the mini sounds best. More on how to optimize these things in another installment.
Of course, if you have the money and can live with constantly refreshing your listening library, an external SSD can be another big step up.
So, to recap:
external music storage should use a different interface than the dac, should be buss powered (as a starting point), should use the Oxford 834 chipset for FW and should be 5400 rpm to cut down on mechanical and electrical noise.
For usb storage, the WD passport drives seem to be the go-to choice, but also benefit from a better quality usb cable.
OCZ Vertex 3 and Crucial SSDs are recommended for the mini (but if you have something else, don't sweat it, just use what you have now.) You can buy configured external drives or bare cases for installing your own drives from Oyen Digital and OWC (note the OWC enclosures are plastic and seem to make more mechanical noise than the aluminum ones from Oyen.
And, depending on how much hi-res content you have, you can start with 500g or 1 tb drives, and with firewire you can daisy chain them and just add more drives as your collection grows.
Next installment I'll go over some basic tweaks to iTunes, the operating system, drive formatting considerations, etc. Then, aside from some more advanced tweaks, and of course ripping and loading your music files and choosing and configuring your playback software of choice, you should be ready to start playing tunes.
Note, you will need a keyboard and display to get through all this and to get things setup for headless operation, but once that is done you should only need them for making any changes.
Thanks,
Jim
