The MAC Mini Thread

[ramicio]

No, nothing is lost, hence LOSSLESS.  Lossless compression finds redundant data and unused least significant bits (a simplified explanation) to shrink the file size.  The decoder will then restore every sample, bit for bit, back to the original waveform.  You can sit at a computer all day compressing and decompressing between lossless and uncompressed, and at the end of the day you will have the EXACT same data when decompressed.  In the end, a PCM decoder will send PCM to the audio renderer or DSP section of a player, and lossless codec's decoder will also send that same PCM data to the rest of the chain mentioned before.  Again, lossless is not some psychoacoustic trick like lossy compression that assumes there are sounds you won't hear, so it literally throws the data away never to be recovered again.  It throws nothing away, it simply consolidates things that are redundant.  It applies to zip, rar, or any archives.  It applies to FLAC or any other lossless audio format.  It applies to PNG, TIFF, and other lossless image formats.  It applies to lossless video codecs like HuffYUV.  You can spend all day going back and forth between an uncompressed file and a losslessly compressed one, in any field, and not lose a single bit of data.

Maybe this should be split off into a thread of its own, since this is no longer about Mac Minis.

[Wanderer]

I have to admit, "Lossless Compression" is an oxymoron.

No, it is not an oxymoron, IF the data that is being compressed out is redundant AND the results of the decompressed file is indential to the orignal uncompresed file. The bit stream can, and has, been compared between the source data and FLAC compressed/decompressed data. The numbers in are the same as as the numbers out. No loss = "lossless".

I can write

"222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222222"

or I can write

"2  sixty times"

or

"2 60x"

Some versions take up less space but all translate to the same thing. Same information is stored in less space.       

I am NOT saying that in real world FLAC encode/decode will always sound the same as the orginal, but the difference points to an error in the system somewhere. 

     Kevin R-M
 

[Tickwomp]

I have one of the Mach2 Mac Minis.  Love it.  I went with battery powered option, and recently added the Pi Audio Battery Buss.  Was so impressed with the Battery Buss I just ordered an Uber Buss (for the AC powered stuff).

I have both Amarra and Pure Music.  They both sound wonderful, but I prefer the Amarra.  My Mini is controlled with an iPad and I don't even have a monitor or mouse/keyboard connected.  I use iTap VNC on the iPad to connect to the Mach2 via Wlan and it works very well.  I had a boatload of FLAC material on various drives, but used XLD to convert everything to AIFF to store on my music storage drive.  Adding new music is super easy too.  If I have it on a USB drive, I simply plug it into the Mach2 and open XLD and save it to the storage drive.  Ripping CDs is stupid simple too, but because I don't leave the optical drive connected to the Mach2, I have to drag it out and plug it in.  The drive is setup to automatically rip the CD into storage drive.  

Early on, after I got the music server working properly I compared it to my Oppo 83SE NuForce modded player and it was really no contest.  Music player killed the Oppo in every aspect.  Add in the convience factor of never having to dick around with CDs again makes this something I could have only dreamed of 10 years ago.  

Tick

[ramicio]

Does anyone bother experimenting with Linux or Windows 7 with these machines?  I have a tough enough time buying into Linux for its horrible support of being a media-oriented OS.  I would think with all the proprietary crap going on inside of Mac-land, that the media experience would be the worst, by far.  They look like a cool machine, but were way beyond my price range.

[Doc B.]

Tim, we really try hard to be supportive in this community. I think you have spent time acquiring a good base of knowledge worth sharing. But your posts are unnecessarily aggressive, and it has come to my attention that they are turning a lot of people off. That may be the effect you wish to achieve or it may be unintentional. Regardless, I would appreciate your toning down the intolerant nature of your writing.

A good friend of mine once told me "When I was young I had all the answers. As I got older I found out there were a lot more questions."

[ramicio]

You obviously have a PM, and since you likely won't answer it, you lost my business.

[Paul Joppa]

... I'm just saying that it means something in the playing software chain MUST be broken for this to happen.

Given the widespread observations by many whose ears are really good, I think that must be the case.

It does not, unfortunately, follow that anybody actually knows what that something is.

[ramicio]

You might not, but the person developing the decoder could easily figure out what is wrong.  It's just a matter of admitting there is a problem, that the two should sound identical, because they are, and reporting a bug to the developer.

[BNAL]

I agress and it sounds like it could be codec issue.

[Yoder]

I'm real interested in building a music server for my lossless music files. I'm seriously considering a MAC Mini for the job. If anyone has information that can get me started please post it here. I'd be interested in hearing about hardware, software, modifications, compatible DAC's and the best lossless formats. And of course, how it integrates into your Bottlehead gear.

I bought a new mini few months ago and have slowly been converting it to a music server. Once I get a next generation of iMac, is when it becomes a fully dedicated server--about the time I finish my Paramount's, Foreplay III, and soon to be purchased Eros. I bought it with Lion, and a 500 Gb HD. I took it down to the local Apple vendor and they slapped a 64 Gb SSD in it for $140 or so and I use the 500 Gb as my secondary drive for music. I am running Amarra, and am slow disabling certain apps/utilities in the OS, etc. Per the suggestions here I downloaded demos of PureMusic, Amarra, Audvara, etc., and came away preferring the sound of Amarra.

I convert everything to AIFF. Amarra will take FLAC files/folders and do it for you. In fact, last night I downloaded about 12 Gb of free FLAC24 audio and converted all of them to AIFF with Amarra. I may be wrong, but logically it seems that playing FLAC or any compressed file will put extra demands on the CPU since they must be decompressed. I have not run into any problems running Amarra with Lion, and using Bottlehead components. Initially, they were saying that Lion was a less superior audio wise but I have not noticed any difference. I use the optical output of the mini and was using a Firewire DAC for awhile to connect to my DAC.

For comparison, I have a CD player hooked-up to the mini system. When I do not pass the audio through the Amarra there is a profound difference in audio quality. Bottom line, the mini system is far superior to the CD player.

I also have 4-backup drives to store all of my audio files on. Another option is that you can hook-up one of your audio hard drives to Airport Extreme, and the audio can then be played on any computer through out the house.

[btrancho]

In fact, last night I downloaded about 12 Gb of free FLAC24 audio and converted all of them to AIFF with Amarra.

Not to spin this thread off in even another direction, but I'd be interested in where you were able to download 12GB of free FLAC24 files and what genre of music it is.

[Gallowglass]

Hi, I am the guy Grainger49 (there is only one) posted about earlier on. I assume this thread is still about Mac Mini use and hasn't gotten completely off topic.

I picked up a very used 1.5 GHz Intel Core Solo in trade for a MacBook that had suffered some form of breakage on every piece of plastic on it. This MacBook was owned by my son who is eminently qualified to be the stunt double for the gorilla on the old Samsonite commercial, but I digress. Maxed out the memory to 2 GiB, which is just enough to run Pure Music memory play properly. Although I use the Mac for playback, I typically control it using UltraVNC on my Windows 7 notebook.

My music is typically ripped WAV or downloaded FLAC files which I then convert to Apple Lossless before storing on a Buffalo TeraStation NAS, also picked up used off of Craigslist, then upgraded with bigger drives. The Mac and the Terastation are both hardwired to the home network. I use a 6 inch generic USB cable from the Mac to a Wavelength Brick V1. I am fond of the NOS sound (used to own an Ack! DAC), but will probably give in and upgrade the DAC to v3 eventually.  Amplification is a Red Wine Audio Signature 30 via Kimber 8VS to vintage Spendor SP-1 loudspeakers. Sorry, no tubes except for the Brick. I am looking for an LFD Mistral if anyone here happens to have one they would consider selling

This approach, which has been put together over a couple of years without benefit of any homologation, has resulted in sound that my golden eared purist friend thinks doesn't sound bad at all. YMMV. My musical taste runs the gamut, so not limited to small ensembles or "audiophile approved" recordings. As they say, hope this helps.

[Grainger49]

Ok, Doug's quote, "Doesn't suck at all" isn't what I said and that is why he didn't put quotes around it.  

I might have heard three server systems and Doug's is the best.  We all but lulled ourselves to sleep relaxing and listening.

And welcome to the forum.

[Yoder]

Not to spin this thread off in even another direction, but I'd be interested in where you were able to download 12GB of free FLAC24 files and what genre of music it is.

The wife financed some B&W CM1's for my computer set-up (my workstation is in a 250 sq ft room) for my birthday last month. When I registered the B&W speakers they said I could download up to three albums at their site. Since I registered both speakers, then I assumed that I was going to get six downloads. The downloads started crapping out after x-number and so I went into the "Settings" of their download manager and increased my download disk space size from 5 Gb to 20 Gb, and started downloading like a maniac. I was able to download everything that struck my fancy, and did. The only stuff I liked was the classical. They had the new Thomas Dolby and I did not like it at all, and there were a few other "pop" artists that were equally as bad in my opinion. But, you can't go wrong with Beethoven, Debussy, Handel, Mozart, etc.

In the past companies like Mercedes-Benz, Audi, etc. would make available free music. The like to show off their quality audio systems. It is a hit-or-miss thing, sometimes you get some great stuff and other times it just plain old sucks.

[jrebman]

I have been doing this computer music server thing for many years now and out of windows, linux and Apple, the apple mini is by far the best, and can be taken up  several notches with the Mach2 mods, external FW storage (unless the dac is FW, then you should use usb or thunderbolt storage).  I use puremusic myself but will try Amarra soon, though PM still seems to be the most stable of the two.

Tim R. -- bits are not bits even though they are supposed to be, and yes, extra processing inside the machine does effect sound quality negatively and your assertionss about jitter as well as many other things seem to be based on heresay rather than real world experience, and any c ompetent digital systems engineer will tell you that it is impossible to eliminate jitter, never mind that there are different kinds of jitter, some of which are inaudible and others of which, even in small amunts are very audible.

And no, it's not the codecs that are creating the problem, though it may in part be one part of the puzzle, but electrical noise, power suplies, etc. are critical in digital audio, which is no9t the same as digital data transmission.

You say you never could afford a mini and thus I'm assuming you've never played with one, tried different settings, software, dacs, etc. with it, but the mac mini -- not a macbook, Pro, iMac or whatever, is anything near the audio performance of the mini, and neither is a stripped down single board linux computer or windows with XP or Vista -- though some are getting results close to or equal to the mini with some combinations of win7, playback software and dacs.  So again, your assertion that the mini would, or should be the worst platform is completely unfounded and just plain wrong.

And before you ask, aside ffrom experimexperimenting with probably 25 different dacs, 45 or 6 computer platforms, various connections from spdif to usb to firewire, and many different software solutions,  I am an EE/CE by training and did my graduate work in computer and cognitive science, so my background, aside from my 40 years of audio experience is earned, and I'm still elearning every day ss it seems the rest of the world is as well, especially when it comes to digital audio.  And no, I absolutely do not it all, in fact I consider myself still pretty green in many ways, experience aside.

Now... to the original OP, a very good place to start with a mac mini is with a stock machine -- the most basic 2.3 ghz 2011 or a 2010 is just fine.  Max out the memory to 8gb -- cheap and very much worth it (but don't buy the memory from Apple, buy it and install it yourself -- I'm totally blind and did it in under 2 minutes), buy a third party SSD of 40 to 60 gb (vertex and Crucial are good choices), turn off a bunch of unnecessary features and services (there are many onlie guides on what and how to do this), and then assuming you would be using a usb to spdif converter or usb dac, get something like the 1 tb Oyen Digital MiniPro FW800 portable drive for music storage (or something similar that uses the Oxford fw chipset), rip tunes to AIFF using XLD -- even better than iTunes with error correction enabled, but a PITA to setup for the first time).  Then pick a software package you like -- Pure Music, Amarra, iTunes with BitPerf.app, Decibel, Audirvana or the Plus version, and have at it.  Also try to turn off as many unneeded interfaces as possible -- ir receiver, ethernet if you don't need a network connection, blue tooth for sure, and wireless lan if also not needed, and experiment with the polarity of the power cord for the sound you want -- in one orientation it's more warm and in the other, more bright.

I use mine with a wired usb keyboard and a headphone extension cable so I can use the speech system in macs -- VoiceOver) to navigate my way arund the machine, but PureMusic also lets you use the iTunes remottte app on an iPhone/iPad/iPod touch if you so desire, but you will havve to have either the ethernet or wireless enabled for that to work.

That should get you going, and will give you sonics equal to or better than some veryhigh-end CDPs, and in fact, my experience has been that an accurately ripped CD, played from memory through a good dac will sound noticeably better than extreme CD players.  I used to own an Audio Aero Capitole 24/192 Mk.II SE and the information that I can get out of a standard redbook cd with my mac mini rig isfar superior -- in fact, most people can hardly believe how much information there really is on a standard 16/44.1 CD.

Hope this helps -- this is what I use in 2 of my 3 systems, thought the reference system does use a DC modified Mach2 server with a Pi battery buss, which BTW, just takes the whole thing into a whole new realm, and this week I'll add dc power to the external firewire drive (another large improvement) and a specially built firewire cable with the power legs removed -- again, isolating the computer noise from the storage subsystem and dac as much as possible.  Admittedly this is a system that is a bit oveer the top but it is far better than any digital I've heard anywhere, and I've heard many of the best of the best as I have some local friends who are super high end dealers.

Good luck, and yes, I whole heartedly recommend the mac mini over pretty mucch anything else at this point.

Also apologize for the myriad typos -- my keyboard is getting old and my screen reader is not letting me review my writing.

-- Jim